Chapter 48: What does a child know?
The two parties got seated before one another, but the white lady did not feel as good as she was a moment ago.
"Is this perhaps a joke, Lady Emilia?" The White lady wasn’t the one to ask the question but Rainin, the Magic Swordsman.
He was used to the plays of his mother, but the boy who sat before her was simply smiling at her warmly as if he didn’t understand anything going on here.
His mother was also smiling at him, but it wasn’t a warm smile. It was the expression that was cursing him for his mere presence in this place.
"No. No at all. If you want..." Lady Emilia was pleased by whatever was going on here so she nodded at Flora and accepted the parchment that she placed into her hands.
"Here’s the official letter from the Lord. If you still have any doubts, we can have an emergency chat with him over Magic Communication." Lady Emilia was going as far as offering a direct call to the patriarch.
But, the white woman knew all too well that this was a ploy of these Sungrades as well.
"I don’t think we would need that, my dear Lady."
She just accepted the parchment and confirmed the contents in it before handing it back.
She knew the patriarch was at the imperial capital right now. She thought it would be something regarding the Faceless Manipulator once again, but that might not be the case seeing how he appointed a Boy as his spokesperson.
’Did he just want to humiliate me?’
The knight and his family that she killed a while ago weren’t the first ones of the sungrade messengers that had ’died’ in a tragic accident on their way back.
She didn’t know anything about them in the first place so she was innocent in that matter. So, what could be his reasoning behind choosing this boy?
’Has he finally gone insane? Does he want to confirm it was us by placing the one we wanted to remove in front of us?’
That might not be the case either since she wanted to remove all of the Sungrades as well as their people from the world. The one before her was just the start.
"Hmmm..." She could not find the answer on her own, so she thought about it for a moment while looking at the boy before her.
’He still has the Energy Decay Syndrome.’
She could tell since she had a special sense for natural Mana. the energy surrounding him was being expelled from his body.
But at the same time, the rate at which his body accumulated the energy was not normal either.
’Still...’
What can he do with the energy that he cannot even use?
"What is the matter, m’Lady? Isn’t there something you want to ask us?"
He was still smiling at her in that annoying way... she really wasn’t liking this boy.
However, losing her temper here would only shame her, so she shook her head in an elegant manner.
"No no, young lord. You were supposed to be the one asking me a question." She couldn’t be the one opening the account even if she wanted to anyway.
She knew she would lose some ground even if their victory was certain here. She just didn’t want to give them any points right now.
"Oh, is that so? But I don’t really want to ask you any questions." Sam knew how to deal with this particular woman.
He didn’t interact with her much in his past life, but he knew her all too well thanks to one of his students.
"Oh? There’s nothing the Sungrade wants to ask us? Then, I take it you don’t have any business with us regarding your false accusations."
If he said he didn’t want to ask them any questions, then the meaning was simple. They were not accusing her of being involved with the incident or the manipulator in the first place.
And since there were no accusations, there was no need to clear anything up. Meaning this whole gathering was for naught.
"No, we certainly do not accuse you of anything." Prism went as far as saying that, and the warm smile was still present on his face.
"Ah, then we don’t have to talk about this at all~. Now, if you could just compensate us for the false accusation and the–." Since he revoked the accusations, it became slander towards her family.
She was going to milk out every bit of compensation from them for dragging their family name down, but the boy sitting before her shook his head calmly before she finished her words.
"We know it was you." He didn’t sugarcoat his words, and the warmth on his face still remained constant.
"You were the one who hired the Faceless Manipulator, you were the one who hired the people to look after him, and you were also the one who planted people to spy on the work of the Faceless Manipulator."
One thing that Prism knew that the others in his family didn’t was the level of this white woman’s degeneracy.
"Furthermore, you have had most of our messengers killed that never made it back home or died shortly after coming back because of ’natural’ causes.
Not only that, if I could, I would charge you for every damn ’white casualty’ that has happened until now. But, we aren’t talking about the dark past of the ."
The moment those words left his mouth, the eyes of the white woman shook violantly. It took a lot of her will to maintain her composure and her fake calmness, but her son could not do the same.
"The white casualties?"
It was something that happened in a different continent so he might not know it, but the boy before her knew all about her dark past.
He just couldn’t prove any of it but it still proved to be an effective weapon against her.
"I don’t know what you’re saying, but saying I have killed your people outright is quite the accusation, young one."
She seemed calm when she took another sip from her warm tea.
"Oh, I’m not accusing you of anything. I know it. And you know it better than any of us just how delightfully you collected the negative energy of the people you tortured to maintain that appearance of yours."
-Trr.
The cup in her hands shook ever-so-slightly that it was almost impossible to notice. And yet, two people in this room did notice that fraction of an instance.
"Well, as it is your motto, ’the truth is only that which can be supposed with evidence’, we cannot prove any of these things."
The smile on his face remained warm as he looked at her with his fingers crossed, his hands resting on his lap.
"What we can do here, is to simply talk things out and see how we can move forward, right? After all, what all of us present ’here’ would like, seems to be a future, no?"
She didn’t want to ask him a question to avoid any disadvantages. But the synopsis of his ’information’ was too heavy for her to ignore him.
"Now then..." Prism believed that he had taken over the control of the conversation’s flow.
He was going to proceed with the next phase, but the white woman wasn’t going to give her advantage up so easily.
"You’ve been spouting nonsense since earlier. What does a child even know about the official talks between noble families?
You haven’t even learned about how society works, child."
She was now annoyed as if she really had nothing to do with any of the things he had spoken until now.
She didn’t have her advantage anymore but she also knew that the smiling boy before her wasn’t sitting there just because of the Sungrade Lord’s plans.
There was something more at play here.
Not even the ladies present in this room knew what he was talking about. And from the looks of it, she could tell he knew disgustingly specific details about everything he had uttered until now.
’Just... who is this boy?’
The people of this continent should not know what transpires in a corner of a different continent, not when they were a regional power.
If it was someone from a place like Stanox, she would have accepted this vast knowledge about worldly events, but not him. Not this green boy before her.
"These accusations are just disrespectful."
She stood up and turned around to stomp out of this room.
"We will be returning to our chambers for the day."
She was definitely going to leave, but Prism wasn’t done with her just yet.
"Oh? You want to leave already? Hmmm... Too bad then. I was going to offer a cure for Sir Rainin’s curse if these talks were successful."
Those words froze her in her place.
"What did you just say?"
Now, there was no way she was going to walk out of here even if she wanted to.