The Villainess That Was Once A VRMMO player-Chapter 42，Part1

T/L: Hi, I posted wrong chapter yesterday. This is the correct one. I have also deleted the wrong chapter to avoid any further confusion. Sorry for the issue.

The King’s Brother and the Witch (3)

“…Is this really what you wanted?”

The Count of Arceides, who had dared to make Camille insist on the heavy knights’ inspection, returned to his office in the castle and held his head in his hands with a gloomy face.

In this country, any nobleman with a certain amount of territory could cheat on his income and expenses to reduce the number of taxes he pays to the government.

Part of the money went to the prime minister and other powerful people in charge of domestic affairs, so there was never a problem. 𝒃𝙚𝙙𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡．𝙘𝙤𝙢

The Count of Arceides Frontier was ridiculed among the nobles for having an [abomination] born, but he had gradually dispelled his bad reputation in the royal capital by increasing his payments to the prime minister and by offering the abomination as a tool for the prime minister.

“It is all right, Count Arceides.”

“Gallus-dono…”

The only other noble-looking man present in the room, who was around 30 years old, exhaled purple smoke slowly while shaking his cigar.

“The Prime Minister believes that if His Highness lets you off the hook, then he can use your daughter as a shackle for His Highness to bind him; or if His Highness is a man with a strange sense of justice and cannot overlook injustice, then it can’t be helped if he ends up in an accident on the frontier.”

“Hou, it really won’t cause any trouble for my family, will it? What would the neutral nobles say if His Highness were to die in my domain…”

“Well, some trouble is inevitable, but I don’t think it will be that bad. It would have been more troublesome if he had died in the capital, but the Devil’s Forest is extremely dangerous, and there are no nobles in the capital willing to blame you and then face the demons on your behalf.”

“I wish that were the case, but…”

“Well, it’s a shame to lose a tool like that…”

.

“Carol’s a fool! If only she could live, so that she could be used to negotiate with the other nobles again. Who do you think is to blame for the ridicule of my House of Arceides? I raised her, and now she’s repaying that debt!”

“Well, I’m sure your wife will feel better once that thing is gone.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Gallus, the prime minister’s chief advisor, inwardly scoffs at the outraged Count Arceides.

It was absurd to ask his own daughter to feel indebted to him after he had persecuted her almost to the point of not giving her adequate support.

The [Abomination] was such an abhorrent existence in the Kingdom of Caenista, but thanks to this abomination, the Count of Arceides could not refuse to do Gallus’s dirty work.

(And yet…)

The abomination was a bit of a letdown, he thought. She was a half-elf, so she still looked very young, but in ten years she would be a beautiful girl with the grace of a noblewoman.

The nobles who wanted her as a slave would pay any amount of money to get her. Not only that, but she possessed great magical power and was said to be favored by the spirits of darkness, so she would be a valuable asset to their army if she could be trained to become a slave.

Gallus, as the prime minister’s faithful advisor, was glad that he could get rid of Camille so easily, while sneering at the Count of Arceides, who did not know the value of a golden egg and was willing to sell it off for a low price.

(Then, shall I also see the end of His Highness?)