Chapter 329 – 329. The Duchess’ First Struggle (3)

– One –

Because the sunset has come so fast, it’s not too late, but the sunset paints everything in the islands red.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

Along the road paved with elaborately hewn flagstones, quadruped carriages lavishly adorned with gold and precious stones advance.

Gold and jewels shined beautifully in the sunset light, but somehow it looked lonely.

It was also because all the subjects of the system hurriedly retreated after seeing the Whiskey family coat of arms engraved on the wagon.

Even though it was passing through the bustling city center of such a crowded system, the carriage reminded me of a lonely castaway in a ghost town.

Inside the wagon,

“Father… The girl, huh… The girl is so lonely…”

Swoop, Swoop.

Chiba was wiping away the flowing tears.

However, no matter how many times she stole, she couldn’t completely wipe away the endlessly flowing tears.

It is because the tears flow endlessly, to the extent that the act of wiping them feels meaningless.

“I miss you so much… I want to hear your concubine’s voice, see your face, imagine being held in your arms, and chat with your consort…”

Chiba successfully completed the regular meeting of the Eonsim Committee.

All of her goals were achieved, and what Regal demanded was certainly accomplished.

Previously, when I sent a letter with these contents written in person, these incompetent, stupid, and even lazy humans did not carry out it properly at all.

No, let alone practice, we couldn’t even properly discuss it.

Because of that, even though it was a situation where it was difficult for Chiba to go outside, in the end, she had no choice but to attend the ceremony dressed up to the fullest.

“Why… Why did you not even communicate with the girl for the last time?

Patter.
Drop, drop.

Chiba’s cries grow louder.

Intensifies

Her sadness stemmed entirely from Regal’s recent lack of direct communication with her.

She let Regal know that she had accomplished her mission, and she wanted him to acknowledge her.

She wanted to be praised for doing a good job, and she wanted to hear his voice gently whispering to her to wait a little longer.

However, he left without saying anything and went beyond the communication range to the north.

She was so savage that she couldn’t stand it.

“The girl did something wrong, I made a mistake, husband… I won’t do anything useless… I’ll only do what I’m told to do, and I won’t complain about pointless things… I did something wrong…”

However, no matter how much she cried out in loneliness and sorrow, the Regal communication magic tool did not respond.

Regal did not respond to her request for communication until the preset time limit had elapsed, so it was only indirectly aware that he had already left the communication range.

“The girl will do better… So, so please…”

No matter how desperately she shouted, no answer came back, so her call was empty.

– 2 –

In the darkness of Regal’s office,

“Haaaaa…

Chiba doesn’t even turn on the lights, and swallows loneliness there alone.

Several days had passed since Regal had already been out on the battlefield, but not even a trace was left.

“Hua -eup …! Haah …

Chiba takes a deep breath, desperately following the reverberation of Regal.

She visualizes Regal in her mind.

At that time,

Smart smart

“… Come on in.”

Someone knocks on a room without an owner.

It was so unpleasant that it seemed like her time to trace Regal had been interrupted, but since she wasn’t the owner of her office, she struggled to swallow it to herself.

In addition, in her office without her owner, she knew that she was alone, but there was only one person she knew who would break into her.

Squeak.
Click.

As she expected, the butler shows up.

When he sees that the lights are out,

Tiff.

As if nothing was wrong, the indoor light magic tool was turned on.

Not only did her eccentricity not last for a day or two, but pointing out her eccentricity was due to judgment, not to those who served her.

“I have something to report to you, Duchess.”

“…Is it urgent, head butler?”

Chiba answered in a choked voice.

Chiba’s eyes were bloodshot even redder than her sunset, from sobbing all the way back to her mansion.

It seemed that she still couldn’t control her emotions, judging from the cry still in her voice.

“It was very urgent, so I had no choice but to risk rudeness and come to find it myself.”

“…”

Chiba is silent for a moment.

The current head of the house is no different from Regal’s representative.

It doesn’t matter if he arbitrarily resolves most of the problems in his line and then submits an after-action report to Regal.

However, finding oneself without being able to do so obviously means one of two things.

A problem related to her broke out, or a problem that was difficult to solve only with her influence.

However, since she had been self-reflection and looking back on her own actions, she decided that it was most likely not a problem related to herself.

“If you found me at this hour, is it a media issue?”

The butler raises his eyes as if in surprise.

However, it could have looked rude in Chiba’s eyes, so he quickly straightened his expression.

Perhaps since that incident, she has somehow been a broken Chiba, but she still seems to realize that her intelligence and sharpness have not faded.

“… That’s right.”

“Tell me in detail.”

Flutter.
Sararak.

The butler brings out a report.

I corrected her monocle and looked down at it.

Only then did Chiba notice, but the butler couldn’t hide his nervous expression.

Anxiety begins to sprout in Chiba’s heart.

“The Duchess will also remember that this spring, when the heads of the imperial faction were caught in the circumstance of a dirty trick, they carried out minor retaliation against the imperial nobles and members of their families.”

“Yes. To test the perfection of our talented people, we conducted operations against suitable targets.”

“Yes. At that time, the press was rather noisy and public opinion was quite agitated, so didn’t the imperial faction even use that as an excuse to bring Your Highness to the hearing?”

“Of course I remember.”

Chiba nods her head.

Could it be that she was thinking of the insolent imperial faction that had dared to cheat on her Regal?

Her eyes are stained with ferocity.

“At that time, the press responded well to the noise, and the coroner and the investigator were bribed to stop the progress of the investigation. You buried the investigator well too. I thought you handled it very wisely, but could that be a problem in the future?”

The owner of the house nods her head with a heavy expression.

It seemed that he, too, could not bear the divergence.

“The investigator cleverly left a memorandum with evidence of transactions with us, and it seems that it leaked to the press. Someone exposed the article with a copy of it and an authenticity appraisal on the family seal, so that His Majesty the imperial faction It is being widely known that he deliberately sabotaged the investigation of the serial murder case, and there are even suspicions that His Highness orchestrated the assassination of imperial nobles.”

“What, what…?”

Her expression turns pale.

She seemed unable to believe what the head of the house said to her, as if she had heard something she hadn’t heard.

The owner of the house lowers her head with an expression of disrespect.

“Why did you leave it there? Didn’t you dispose of it while annihilating the investigator’s family?”

“At the time, I thought that the media companies attacking our side and Her Majesty were related to the old media representatives and their gangsters. Since articles are only published with anonymous contributions, we have not been able to track down their traces at all. So,”

“Are you saying that not only did you keep the family members alive, but you also neglected it even though you knew the existence of the memorandum left by the investigator?”

“That’s right…”

Chiba frowns at the owner of the house as he cuts off his words.

She couldn’t accept the butler’s clumsy handling of work.

It was also hard to believe that even though some of them were left to use as traps, they were not strictly monitored and managed.

“It’s not that you didn’t manage it, did you create a hole in the investigator’s monitoring network for the bereaved family?”

“Speaking of conclusions, the Duchess is right. Those who came into contact with them were strictly monitored, but it seems that some of the operatives dispatched at the time were careless. No one visited them for several months, and the last The person who came to us was said to be an old beggar who looked like he was about to die.”

“Without tracking his whereabouts, did the operative just look at the old beggar’s appearance and let go?”

The butler shook his head.

Somehow he seemed embarrassed.

“At the time, the operative followed the old beggar. However, the old man had never met anyone or gone anywhere, just begged day after day, went into a cabin in a deserted forest, and waited blankly for death. For over two weeks, someone Since no action was taken to cure the chronic disease, let alone find it, it was not unusual for the operative to return to his main task of monitoring the investigator’s bereaved family.”

“Ughhh…!”

Hard.

Chiba bursts into anger and gnashing his teeth.

The emotion that made her eyes reddened was sadness, but that turned into anger.

Because of that, her eyes were still bloodshot.

“Is he the most suspicious right now?”

“Yes. Even after that, it was reported that the bereaved family of the investigator continued to live in isolation at home without meeting anyone else.”

“I see. Then, the old man must have been considering the possibility that he was being tracked by someone from a long time ago. It must be clear that the old man, who turned into a beggar, collected the bereaved family members of the investigator and secretly delivered it to the minions he recruited in advance while begging, right?”

Chiba makes her eyes shine.

She continues her reasoning without hesitation, as if she has never lost her firearm since that incident.

“And the old man must have been one of the old media representatives. He handed over the collected evidence to his servants, and left a will before he died. And after he died, a person related to the media, or another old media representative, While collecting his corpse, he must have found out where the evidence related to his wife was. They had a grudge against us from the beginning without even knowing the subject.”

“Ah…”

The head butler hears Chiba’s reasoning and expresses her admiration.

It seems that he was only focused on the response itself, and did not even think about analyzing the cause more deeply.

“Calibrating the old beggar for not handling it in time is meaningless now. It’s definitely a pity to miss it, but you can’t miss the right time to respond properly by being preoccupied with censure.”

“Yes, yes.”

That’s what she said, but Chiba said that she would probably proceed with the punishment of the operative who watched the investigator’s bereaved family once the situation was settled.

It is because she was not one to be withdrawn and that she was always more zealous for punishment than reward.

The butler secretly expressed his condolences to the agent in advance.

“Did you send an agent to the place where the old beggar was last seen?”

“Right after checking the article in question, I did just that.”

“Please bring it back.”

“That…”

Chiba ordered firmly.

The butler hesitated for a moment as if he was puzzled.

“Did you even ask the Grand Sorcerer for cooperation?”

“No.”

“If that’s the case, sending an operative is completely pointless. It’s clear that the people who recovered the body must have collected all the relevant physical evidence anyway, and if you turn over the remaining traces, the only thing you’ll find is the decaying old man’s corpse.”

“Ah… I see.”

The butler bows his head.

He thought he did well in confiding in Chiba about the current situation.

I honestly felt relieved.

“And chasing the person who published the article wouldn’t have much meaning. I’ve already repeated this several times, but it always failed because I was blocked by the wall of an anonymous logistics company protected by the imperial family. Isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

Chiba widens her eyes.

The head butler was reading anger close to madness in her eyes.

It looked like the eyes of a beast of prey or a bird of prey that had been robbed of the most precious thing.

“Then, there is only one remaining, and only meaningful, means. The revelations made by the media have no choice but to be covered up by another revelation.”

“…”

The butler again hesitates to answer.

What he wanted from her in the first place was for her to regulate the media outlets that had mobilized her mind and exposed the fatal incident to Regal.

The butler hoped that by forcing himself to shut his mouth like that, he would buy time to respond at least for a while, then dispatch an agent to Regal’s location to discuss countermeasures with him directly.

However, since she was asking for a completely unreasonable response, the butler couldn’t help but feel anxious.

“The Duchess. So,”

“The butler.”

Chiba lowers his voice.

As she calls out to him with a growl, goosebumps run on her boss’s skin.

“Do you want to be called Pernod Ricard, and not Chief Butler anymore?”

“That, it’s not that, so-“

“Otherwise, are you worried that I will cause harm to your husband again with my arbitrary judgment?”

“…!”

The butler shivered.

Because she hit the mark, the owner of the house sneakily avoids her gaze.

But don’t make excuses for it.

It was like sending her warning to her in her own way.

“Chief Butler. I’m not stupid. I realized why my wife was so angry at that time, I literally carve it into my bones. Do you think I’ll make the same mistake I made once?”

“I’m sorry, Duchess. I was presumptuous.”

The butler immediately apologized.

His face and neck were covered with cold sweat, as if he had been pressed down by her force.

“The butler informed the wife directly and tried to respond according to the opinion of the husband, right? And he was trying to buy time until then.”

“That, that, that’s right.”

The head butler was so desperate that she forgot for a moment that she also had the same ability as Regal.

Realizing that there was no way she would not be able to see into her own heart, the butler felt a fear no different from taking on Regal’s wrath personally.

“My judgment is the same. But as a means of buying time, the butler’s initial idea is obviously inappropriate.”

“That, I-“

“The fact that you came to see me as soon as you grasped the situation, wasn’t it your intention to stir up your mind?”

“That, yes…”

Swoop.
Haaa…

Chiba rubs his forehead and lets out a sigh.

She was still trying desperately to be patient with her.

It was because now, when I had to be busy, I couldn’t waste my time arguing with the butler to vent my anger.

“I’ll say it only once. If the physical evidence has already been submitted, then if we come and break the pen of the press, it will only be like admitting that the suspicion is true.”

“Ahhh…”

The butler’s face went white.

He was pretending not to be, but it was clear that he too was taken aback by the situation.

“So we have to be prepared to cover it up with something else. We have to cover it with stimulating and shocking articles so that the pigs and dogs’ attention naturally gets away from the suspicions about us and my wife. Got it?”

“Yes, Duchess.”

“Call the editors of the media companies with whom we have ties immediately. It’s an order.”

“All right!”

Chiba’s struggle has begun.

Her efforts to be loved and accepted by Regal were tearful.

Also, it was desperate.