Previously
Ariella organizes a large-scale renovation of the library using unemployed Kobolds, paying them with her own funds to prevent them from fleeing the territory. Philly is moved to tears by Ariella's kindness and the preservation of her beloved books.
Bivar the vampire ground his teeth in frustration. Ariella had countered him with airtight logic, leaving him without an inch to argue.
He turned sharply to the head butler standing beside her, demanding answers.
“Is what she said true? Did she really undertake this restoration on her own?”
The monocle-wearing Kobold replied in a measured voice:
“Yes, that is correct.”
Ariella, meanwhile, was no longer looking at Bivar at all.
She behaved as if she were utterly finished speaking to him, making her dismissal plain.
Turning toward the workers, she called out,
“All right! Back to work—”
“Hold on, I told you to stop!”
Ariella’s expression curdled into blatant distaste.
“What a persistently clingy, annoying man.”
She clicked her tongue in irritation, stoking Bivar’s fury even further as he cast about for a fresh pretext.
“Fine! Let us grant for argument’s sake that these Kobolds were unemployed until now—that still does not make this work justified!”
Even though the repairs had provided the territory’s people with employment and food, Bivar insisted the move was fundamentally wrong.
“At a time when we lack the crops to gather sufficient taxes, why squander the budget on a trivial library?!”
His voice climbed higher.
“Do you think you have the right to spend the budget like this, without the Demon King’s permission—or mine, the master of the castle treasury?!”
Ah… how cheap and tiresome.
Ariella’s already frosty gaze hardened into something colder and sharper.
Now Bivar was taking issue with the laborers’ wages, questioning why the castle’s funds had been spent without authorization.
He gestured toward the construction materials being hauled by the workers.
“Do you think labor and building materials are free?! It all costs money! It is the Demon King’s castle’s money! Who do you think you are to dispose of the realm’s budget as you please?!”
“I never touched the territory’s budget.”
“What?!”
Bivar froze, the words choking in his throat. A brief silence settled between them.
Ariella continued in a steady, resolute voice,
“The wages for these workers, the materials used for the construction… every copper of it came out of my own pocket.”
Groib, who had been watching in silence, stepped in.
“That is also true. As the contractor stated, not a single sil of the territory’s operational funds was used. Even the meals for the laborers were financed entirely by Lady Ariella.”
She had dipped into the dowry she brought when fleeing the imperial palace—specifically the gold coins that retained their value in the demon realm.
Backed into a corner by Groib’s confirmation, Bivar could find nothing to say. His lips merely parted and closed in silence.
The reason for his bewilderment was obvious. Such an action simply did not fit his worldview.
Spending one’s personal fortune just to look after common subjects?
To him, it was a concept from another world entirely—an idea he could not even begin to fathom.
“Th-That is absurd!”
Having run out of legitimate grounds to object, yet unable to swallow his spleen, Bivar twisted his lips into a sneer.
“Hmph! You must have money to burn if you can squander it on useless endeavors!”
Ariella answered calmly,
“My funds are limited. That is precisely why I considered it deeply and weighed every option before spending a single coin.”
The core of administration lay in allocating limited resources with the highest possible efficiency.
“After due consideration, I became convinced that this project was essential. And having reached that conclusion… I saw it through.”
She leveled a barbed remark heavy with subtext.
“I wonder how much time you dedicate to that kind of deliberation?”
She glanced briefly at the workers—their frames gaunt and their fur brittle from malnutrition—before fixing her gaze back onto Bivar.
Her eyes were brimful of accusation and reprimand.
Though she did not say it aloud, the silent implication rang clear in his ears: ‘None of this would have happened… if you had done your job properly, would it?’
She had struck Bivar right where it hurt most.
He had dealt in petty mockery… only to be countered with a far heavier blow.
Furious indignation surged within him, yet he had not a single pretext left to halt her.
“Oh, and by the way, I secured permission beforehand. I made a proper report… to the Demon King.”
Though she had begun the work before reporting it, she hadn’t lied.
She added, her tone loaded with meaning,
“Watch yourself… I believe I’m beginning to see what you’ve been plotting.”
Bivar glared at her with virulent malice.
His pale complexion warped, flushing mottled crimson before turning livid with sheer rancor.
In the end, he swept his cloak back in a snarl, stomped the ground, and marched away with heavy strides.
Thanks to a turnout far beyond expectations and the special adhesive mixture Ariella had prepared, the library restoration wrapped up swiftly.
As the sun set, the workers headed home carrying bundles of grain, their faces glowing with delight.
Watching them leave, Ariella felt a bittersweet blend of gratification and sorrow.
‘There is still such a long road ahead… What we did today is nothing more than a stopgap. If we truly want to change their lives… this territory needs to be rebuilt from the root up.’
With that resolve, Ariella took a seat inside the newly restored library. She opened the financial ledgers, searching as though the answers she needed were tucked away between their lines.
At first, it was slow going; bookkeeping in the demon realm differed considerably from the methods used in the human realm…
‘Ah, I think I’m getting the hang of this.’
Through repeated passes, the system gradually settled into her mind. Without anyone to guide or teach her, she managed to grasp the underlying principles entirely on her own.
Had Bivar witnessed it, he would have been struck dumb with shock.
Once she mastered the ledger formats and structures, Ariella began scrutinizing the figures with painstaking care.
Given that she had to comb through decades’ worth of accounts, the sheer volume was staggering.
Then, all of a sudden…
‘What’s this?’
Tracing the line items with slow, deliberate focus, she caught an odd dissonance.
‘Something isn’t right here…’
She couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause just yet, but her intuition sounded a clear alarm.
What could it be?
That subtle scratch at the back of her mind drew her deeper into concentration…
Until, suddenly—
Knock, knock.
The rap on the door startled her into realizing just how much time had slipped away while she was buried in figures.
The one at the door was the fairy.
“Lady Ariella, may I come in for a moment?”
What was the matter?
The door swung open, and the fairy fluttered in, carrying a large tray laden with tea things.
“You’ve been working so late, so I brewed you a cup of tea.”
Ariella’s eyes were aching from staring at the columns of numbers, her vision blurring at the edges.
As Ariella cleared the scattered files and notes from the table, the fairy set to preparing the tea. Before long, a gentle, refreshing aroma, light as a summer breeze, wafted through the room.
“Wow, what is this scent?!”
She asked in genuine astonishment.
Though she was a former princess and a connoisseur who had tasted the finest blends across the human realm, the fragrance drifting from the fairy’s pot was exotic, enchanting, and utterly captivating.
“Lovely, isn’t it? It’s an herb that grows only in the Fairy Forest.”
Ah, herbal tea, then.
“The Fairy Forest… isn’t that where all the fairies of the underworld live together?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
All at once, Philly’s expression dimmed slightly.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
Before she could ask, the fairy held out the teacup.
“It’s ready. Please, have a taste.”
Taking a single sip, Ariella’s eyes widened in wonder.
“Wow!”
The crisp flavor swirled gently across her tongue before unfurling into a dazzling aromatic wave through her senses.
Nor was it merely a matter of scent and flavor. Her eyesight, blurry with exhaustion, cleared up instantly, and her mind felt crisp and revitalized.
Savoring it thoughtfully, she marveled in admiration.
‘This… if brought to the human realm, it would sell like water! No, even in the demon realm, there’d be massive demand!’
She asked whether the herb was sold to other races, or if it could be cultivated elsewhere in the Demon King’s domain.
“No, this herb doesn’t grow anywhere outside the Fairy Forest.”
Philly explained that it was not sold to outsiders either; only fairies held the right to harvest and use it.
Ariella clicked her tongue.
“The conditions are quite strict, then.”
“Actually, I read in the archives that there were numerous attempts to cultivate it outside the Fairy Forest.”
It seemed previous demon kings had fallen under the tea’s spell upon tasting it, ordering their retainers to plant it across other lands.
‘No wonder… the scent alone is impossible to resist.’
Yet despite repeated efforts spanning decades, every single attempt had failed, yielding nothing but catastrophic financial losses.
They had hired people capable of breaching the forest’s wards and selected prime soil for farming, but it had all come to naught.
Taking another sip of her tea, Philly said,
“Whenever I read about those attempts, I realize how crucial it is to record history. By nature, people repeat the very same mistakes when they fail to learn from the past.”
She added that had those kings consulted the old records, they could have spared themselves immense time and loss.
Ariella agreed in part, nodding in quiet contemplation.
“True… People always repeat the same mistakes…”
Right then—
‘The same mistake?’
A thought flashed through her mind.
The suspicious itch she had felt while browsing the ledgers moments ago… Only now did the root of that discomfort become crystal clear.
‘Yes… the same mistake repeated over and over, without fail.’
No matter how poor one’s capacity to learn, when a major crisis struck, anyone would naturally look for a remedy.
Yet… for the exact same problem to recur on a regular basis, following the exact same pattern?
And for the figures tied to it to look so suspect as well?
‘That can’t be a coincidence… No, someone did this deliberately.’
Her gut was unmistakable: someone had been pulling the strings from behind the curtain.
END