Chapter 58: Who’s Seducing Whom
"I’d love to say the same, but that would be lying."
Kyiara set her pen down beside the ledger, unhurried, and folded her hands in front of her.
"I take it the two guards at the entrance didn’t let you in politely."
Freya caught a lock of her hair and started winding it around one finger, sitting on the desk, not once taking her eyes off the kitsune.
"You know, the mark of a good ruler is knowing how to spot talent and put it where it belongs." She tilted her head. "How stupid would you have to be to post those two at your door? Weren’t you simply asking for them to die?"
"Bingo."
Kyiara burst out laughing, a hand over her mouth, one of her tails thumping lazily against the armrest.
"Those two were a piece of work, but you know how it is. I play the merciful queen around here. I can’t go killing two of my own men just because I don’t like them."
"But doesn’t that make you an even more wicked person, deep down?" Freya shot back.
"You could put it that way." She shrugged one shoulder. "Or you could look at it as me giving them one last chance."
She adopted a perfectly theatrical tone then, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead.
"If only they’d managed to pull themselves together and not meet such an end."
Freya played along without a moment’s hesitation, arranging her face into something suitably grieved and matching the tone.
"Yes... if only."
A pause, then the kitsune let her hand drop and settled more comfortably into her chair.
"Right, more seriously. What is our defenseless, uneducated little village girl doing here? What does she want from me?"
"I suppose she wants to strike a deal."
Freya appeared to consider it, one finger against her cheek.
"Or perhaps to impose one? To borrow your words, it depends which way you look at it."
She followed the line with a wink.
Kyiara laughed, a bright, genuinely amused laugh, before her expression turned serious all at once, and her voice with it.
"And if I look at it the wrong way, do you seriously believe you could impose anything on me?"
The stars in her eyes began to pick up speed, turning slowly on themselves, while her tails rose behind her as though suspended in the air.
Woow! Isn’t she adorable? She reminds me a little of a nine-tailed Mycofox, maybe I could just—
NO! No no no! Get a grip, Freya, stay serious!
Freya pulled herself together internally, fighting off the wildly inappropriate urge to vault the desk and start petting the woman in front of her.
She slid off the furniture instead, crossed the room to the door, pushed it shut with a sharp click, then came back toward Kyiara at her own pace.
"Let’s say yes."
She stopped at the edge of the desk.
"And to put it plainly, you could say I’m a person from another world."
At those words, Kyiara froze.
Everything about her froze. Her tails dropped all at once, her mouth stayed half open, and the stars in her eyes stopped turning dead.
She, who was so practiced at controlling her emotions, at calculating every possibility and taking the upper hand in any conversation, could never have imagined that the girl passing herself off as a survivor from the village of Veille was one of those beings spoken of in the prophecy.
Still less that she would admit it to her face, just like that.
"And... and young Paydragon knows?"
"He does."
Freya watched her without adding a thing, letting the kitsune work out for herself everything that implied.
"Wait. Wait." Kyiara leaned forward, both hands flat on the desk. "You’re telling me that young Paydragon, that same young Paydragon who’d throw himself off a bridge if a god asked him to, is actually working with an invader out of—"
"Out of greed, yes. That’s exactly it."
Freya smiled.
"And it’s exactly what you’re going to do as well. That’s why I’m here."
Not giving Kyiara a moment to collect herself, she pressed straight on.
She laid out what was going to happen, what she intended to make of Evangel, and the opportunity she would lose by refusing, along with what that refusal would cost her, starting with her immediate death in this very room.
Then she laid out, above all, what she would make of her if she accepted this deal, if she shook her hand and worked for her.
Her skill had of course been running from the very start, and Freya had already noted something along the way.
It works less well on her than on ordinary people, or even on Aldric. Higher mental resistance than humans, or some skill along those lines.
Something to look into later.
Because in any case, even without it, if Kyiara had a shred of intelligence she would accept what was being offered, quite simply because she was a queen who ruled through greed.
And what Freya was offering her at that moment, on a silver platter, was everything that greed could imagine, and a great deal more besides.
She placed both hands on the suitcase then and flicked the clasps open.
The lid came up.
And that was the finishing blow.
Because the suitcase was full of mithrite. That same magical ore, so rare and so expensive on the black market that it was prized above anything else, all because of, or rather thanks to, the crown’s grip on it.
From what Aldric had explained to her, mithrite was naturally rare, of course, but nowhere near to that degree.
The crown of Artenzia controlled the entire production, kept nearly everything extracted under lock and key, and released only a negligible amount onto the market each year.
The result was that the price stayed artificially at the top, and mithrite passed for the rarest ore in the kingdom when it wasn’t nearly as scarce as all that.
A manufactured rarity, maintained by the very people who profited from it.
Freya watched Kyiara’s expression change at the sight of the ore, exactly like Laïa in front of the frozen mangoes, all but drooling, and she carried on.
"I have several mithrite mines."
She let the sentence hang for a second.
"I could supply you to the point of collapsing the price of mithrite on the market, if the mood took us. And I can get hold of plenty of other things too. For instance, I’ve already handed the Paydragon family a violet pepper trade."
She had been dealing with BunnyGirl in the faction chat over these past two weeks. The girl was part of her faction, so Freya had taken the opportunity to buy violet pepper at a lower price by the lot and stockpile it in the dungeon, which had the added benefit of burning off the mana sitting uselessly at her ceiling.
That way she would never run short, able to restock with a single message to BunnyGirl, who apparently sat on an inexhaustible supply of the stuff.
She had thereby opened up a luxury business for the Paydragon family.
And that was how it worked, with concrete results and promise after promise, that she had drawn Aldric little by little into his own greed like a serpent, thanks to her skill of course, but above all thanks to what she kept promising him.
So she now had the face of Medor, the little hero, along with his name for everything touching the outside world and the law.
All she was missing was his shadow, the one who would govern the underground for her going forward.
And that was precisely why she was standing in this office.
She rounded the desk then, moved behind the chair, and leaned down toward the kitsune’s ear.
"I can get absolutely anything. Anything you could want, anything you could even dream of, I can put it in your hands."
She let her hand slide along the top of the chair back.
"Wealth? I’ll serve it to you."
She crossed slowly to the other side, to the other ear.
"Power? The underworld here? The other kings? The underworld of the entire kingdom? No, of the world?"
She smiled.
"I’ll serve you those as well."
A silence.
"All I’m asking is that you work for me."
Because yes, Kyiara was an entire cog in her plan.
A considerable asset, with real experience governing, holding information on any number of nobles across the kingdom and beyond, more than enough to blackmail them at leisure. She had an arsenal at her disposal, starting with the vast information network her girls wove for her.
And above all, her greed made her easy for Freya to manipulate. The dream subordinate, whose loyalty she would never have to question so long as she kept giving her what she wanted.
Once again, her method was thoroughly hypocritical. She claimed she would cleanse this world of its greed, using that very same greed to get there.
And to be honest, it was perhaps unhealthy, perhaps out of line.
But I find it absolutely and divinely exquisite~~
The kitsune turned then, eyes fixed on Freya’s, or rather on her replica’s, and rose slowly from her seat.
"The only thing I want right now is you."
Huh?
And with those words, she threw herself at her.
Huh? Huh? But this wasn’t part of the plan???
Kyiara’s hands closed around her face, her lips found Freya’s, and Freya felt her back hit the desk behind her, the suitcase sliding a few centimeters across the wood with a dull scrape.
There was nothing timid about the kiss. The kitsune kissed her the way you take possession of something, with the assurance of a woman who had never once had to ask twice, her tongue pressing past her lips without the slightest hesitation.
Freya stayed completely still for two full seconds, eyes wide open, her brain running on absolutely nothing.
Wait. Wait wait wait.
A tail wound around her waist, then a second against her thigh, and Freya felt her whole body lift at once and settle onto the desk without her having done a thing about it.
Kyiara leaned in with her without breaking the kiss for a single second, one hand leaving her cheek to slide into the back of her neck and draw her closer still.
It’s hot. Why is it this hot?
She felt a breath against her mouth, a soft laugh, and the kitsune finally pulled back a few centimeters, just far enough to look at her.
The stars in her eyes were turning slowly, and a bright thread still linked their lips.
"You’re offering me the whole world," she murmured. "So how about I start with you?"
Freya blinked.
Well.
Technically, she’s accepting the deal.
That’s what counts, isn’t it?
...Isn’t it?