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Chapter 223: The Joys of Sneak Bites

By the side of the campfire, Cynthia began polishing the sword in her hand while making sure to keep Roel’s carriage in her peripheral vision. At the same time, five mercenaries who were on night sentry duty tonight had scattered in different directions, planting and activating enemy detection magic tools.

Of course, in order to avoid disturbing the Holy Son, Cynthia didn’t plant a magic tool in the vicinity of Roel’s carriage, but she believed this to be enough.

Theoretically speaking, all magic spells in Sia required a medium, be it water, fire, or earth. Even the most elusive of spells would involve the transmission of mana.. The only type of spell that could barely circumvent this theory was the rare spatial magic, but even so, it was severely limited by distance.

On top of that, the carriage which Roel was on couldn’t be invaded by spatial magic at all. As the creators of the ingenious Diamond Rivière, the Sorofyas were more than familiar with spatial magic to know how to deal with them. The carriage had been cast with a barrier that warded off even Charlotte’s teleportation bullet.

Due to this, Cynthia was confident that Roel wouldn’t be in any danger as long as she guarded the entrance. Unfortunately, she was unaware that the existence of incredibly rare bloodlines in the world that allowed transcendents to use unconventional mediums to transmit their mana, for example, moonlight.

In the carriage, Alicia raised her hand and cast a spell that deepened Roel’s sleep, emanating a dim light. After ensuring that everything was in order, she heaved a sigh of relief.

She knew that she couldn’t show herself as they weren’t too far away from the Ascart Fiefdom yet. If her older brother were to learn of her presence, he would angrily send her off.

To be fair, it was not like her older brother was able to force her to leave if she insisted on sticking around, but she had been hesitant to anger him ever since he coughed blood after witnessing their fight. She wanted to avoid making him angry wherever possible.

Having grown up together, she was extremely familiar with her older brother’s character. As long as they were far enough from the Ascart Fiefdom, while he would be angry for a moment, he would surely be too worried to send her back on her own and instead choose to bring her along.

She took off her shoes and climbed onto her older brother’s bed. Like a child pulling a prank, she felt ticklishly excited about secretly sneaking onto her older brother’s bed without him noticing. She silently inched closer to his side before gazing down on him quietly.

Lord Brother looks so adorable asleep.

Alicia’s face began to redden. As the proxy fief lord, Roel knew that he was disadvantaged by his young age, so he had to make sure to uphold a strait-laced appearance so as to avoid getting subconsciously brushed off by others as a kid. It was only when he was asleep that he finally put down his guard and allowed his face to relax fully. In fact, this was one of the reasons why Alicia decided to sneak in and peek at him.

Feeling his warm breaths, Alicia felt her emotions slowly running amok. Under the moonlight, she leaned in a little closer to share a light kiss with the sleeping boy, but she soon realized that she wasn’t satisfied with just this much.

Even though her spell had indeed deepened her older brother’s sleep, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be awakened. There was a possibility that he might wake up if she were to go too far, so the most she could do was to give him a peck on his mouth.

Feeling a little frustrated, she slowly moved downward and started kissing his neck. However, instead of alleviating her heat, her actions only further riled her up. She moaned softly in frustration as she seriously contemplated whether she should just go all-in. However, at this crucial moment, Roel’s subconscious murmur made her jolt in shock.

“Mmm...”

“!”

Alicia’s body stiffened up, but the black-haired boy merely merely adjusted his posture slightly before returning to silence. She heaved a sigh of relief after realizing that it was a false scare, but at the same time, it jolted her rationality back in. She took in deep breaths to calm herself down as she fondled her own abdomen. After a moment of contemplation, she shook her head.

“It won’t do. It’s still too early at the moment. I won’t be able to bear a healthy baby,” she murmured as she bit her own lips in indignance.

in the Sia Continent, noble children were given a comprehensive education on biology so that they wouldn’t mess around out of ignorance of the outcome. All noblewomen would go through a compulsory biology lesson upon the arrival of their first period, and they were warned of the consequences that might arise from ‘tasting the forbidden fruit’ too early.

According to Anna, if she were to get pregnant before her pelvic bone properly developed, she wouldn’t be able to give birth properly. It would be dangerous to both her and her child, which was why she had been curbing herself all this while.

Anna was very thorough in her lesson as she knew of the dangers of misinformation. The greatest killer of young noblewomen in this era was actually childbirth, and it was a problem which even low-level transcendents suffered from.

Of course, Alicia didn’t have to worry about this aspect at all. She was overflowing with so much life force that even cesarean wouldn’t hurt her by much. It was just that the procedure led to another problem—children who weren’t born through natural means were unable to receive Sia’s blessing. That would be a huge disadvantage for the Theocracy’s nobles.

Alicia didn’t want the crystallization of Roel and her love to suffer any grievances, so she could only grit her teeth and toil it out to maturity. With such thoughts in mind, she finally calmed down.

She took a look at her surroundings before shaking her head in displeasure. It would be thrilling to do it in a carriage prepared by the Sorofyas, but she didn’t like the lack of formality in the ritual. It felt almost as if she was a third party interfering in a private space.

If she really wanted to get lovey-dovey with Lord Brother, she would rather do it in the Ascart House, in their love’s nest, than in the wilderness like this.

After dispelling her thoughts, she lay down quietly by Roel’s side and closed her eyes.

Let’s leave it at this for now.

...

The convoy quickly packed up and departed at dawn. Roel thought that he would be lethargic since it had been a while since he had woken up this early, but he was surprisingly faring better than expected. He attributed it to him having a good sleep last night.

He had heard that the presence of nature promoted higher quality of sleep, so perhaps that could be the reason why. It was just that he felt a little queer on his lips.

What’s going on? Did I accidentally hurt my lips?

Roel was surprised by the weird sensation lingering there, but he didn’t think much of it. This was just a minor matter, and it could be possible that he might have just knocked it while turning around.

I mean, what else could it be? Would someone sneak into my carriage in the middle of the night to do this? That’s impossible!

Roel tossed those thoughts to the back of his mind and chowed on some food before resuming their journey to the Austine Empire.

Along the way, he saw a roadsign pointing to the Austine Empire, and he couldn’t help but recall what he knew about that place through the reports.

The Austine Empire was the playground of the bloodline purists. Ever since they successfully rallied the people with the bragging they did at the inception of the Third Epoch, they managed to get a firm footing on the continent and expanded swiftly under the flag of ‘restoring the prosperity of the old empire’. The process involved annexing all of the nearby, smaller countries, resulting in its foreign reputation falling into shambles.

Its foreign diplomacy might be a huge mess, but it was faring well in its internal security. Through instilling the thoughts of ‘superiority on the grounds of bloodline’, they were able to encourage a high level of loyalty amidst their people. While there were some failed campaigns like the one with Rosa, overall, they were still standing strong.

One thing that was worthy of note though was that the Austine Empire had fallen into an awkward position due to the ‘imbalance of yin and yang’.

Through conventional standards, the incumbent emperor of the Austine Empire, Lukas Ackermann, was both a qualified yet unqualified emperor. He had accomplished significant merits, such as reinforcing the stability of the empire, ending the decades old war with Rosa, revitalizing its economic development, and raising the average standard of living of the normal populace. As for his failure... he was far too much of a workaholic and refused to get close to women.

Yes, having an emperor that didn’t like women was a huge disqualifying factor that could easily result in a national crisis!

The nobles who were working under the emperor hoped for him to pass down his legacy to the next generation so that the goodwill that had been built up thus far could continue to persist. A problem with the imperial succession was everyone’s problem.

All of the officials had protested for a long time against Lukas’ failure to fulfill one of his key duties as the emperor, but their concerns were simply shrugged off by the workaholic. It was only in the last twenty years, when Lukas’ influence finally began declining due to his old age, that he finally succumbed to his subordinates’ will and reluctantly took off his pants for the empire.

Ironically, another major problem cropped up from there.

Lukas managed to bear two sons, but there were unfortunately lacking in talent as transcendents. They were still barely qualified as princes, but there was a clear contrast between them and their father, which was honestly a huge disappointment... until his third child, a daughter, was born.

Lilian Ackermann was her name. Unlike her two brothers, she was blessed with great aptitude as a transcendent. Her birth forced Lukas to pull up her pants, for Lilian was the child of the empress. Her lineage granted her huge political resources at her disposal, and she herself wasn’t lacking in any other way either. As a result, despite not having the rights to succession due to her gender, her very presence still threatened the positions of the first and second prince.

There was a rule in the Austine Empire’s laws that stated that the successor to the crown had to be a high-level transcendent unless in turbulent times, and the first and second princes had stagnated at Origin Level 4 for more than a decade now.

For those who had the right to succession to be lacking and the one who didn’t to be overwhelmingly qualified, this brought about quite a huge controversy in the Austine Empire. Nothing had happened thus far, but everyone could sense that a storm was brewing.

“The Ancient Austine back then and now Austine too; it really is a country plagued with troubles,” murmured Roel under his breath.