Chapter 327| This Woman... Is Actually A Thousand Times More Beautiful In Person
The final dismissal bell finally rang. The last Applied Magic class of the day was officially concluded.
Elodie deliberately slowed her movements as she packed her notebooks into her bag, waiting until every last student had walked out the door.
Lady Raveena still stood gracefully at the front of the room, using a wet brush to wipe away the remnants of complex magic circuit diagrams from the blackboard.
"Elodie? Haven’t gone home yet? Is there a magic theory still bothering your head?" Raveena asked softly, without turning her back from the board.
Elodie took a few hesitant steps toward the teacher’s desk. Her fingers, damp with cold sweat, nervously twisted the hem of her uniform. "Lady Raveena... can I ask you something?"
"Of course you can. Ask away." Raveena set down her eraser, turning around to lean casually against the edge of her desk.
A sweet, heavily mischievous smile was already carved onto her lips—as if she had perfectly predicted where this question was heading the moment she saw Elodie’s bewildered face that morning.
"Raphael... yesterday evening when he walked me home... he asked me something really weird," Elodie bowed her head deeply, her cheeks already beginning to burn. "He asked... if I was willing to be his ’girlfriend’."
Raveena didn’t answer immediately. The royal princess’s smile merely widened dramatically.
"And you... you completely didn’t understand what the word ’girlfriend’ means, Elodie?"
Elodie gave a helpless, innocent nod.
Raveena chuckled softly, covering her mouth with one hand. "Oh, by the Goddess... that foolish boy."
Lowering her tone, Raveena looked at Elodie with the tender warmth of an older sister. "Listen to me, Elodie... a ’girlfriend’ is a title for someone incredibly special in your life. Someone whose presence you constantly want to look at every single day without ever getting bored. The kind of person who makes your heart beat ten times faster just by hearing their name."
Raveena paused, thoroughly savoring the look of dawning shock creeping over her student’s face. "Someone whose silhouette always manages to slip into your thoughts right before you close your eyes to sleep... and the very first person you miraculously think of when you wake up in the morning."
Elodie stood completely paralyzed on the classroom floor. The blood rushing to her face felt boiling hot.
"A ’girlfriend’ does start out as a good friend, yes," Raveena continued gently. "But the status is far above that. It’s someone you like more than anything else... and someone who, in return, likes you just as much. It runs much deeper than mere admiration. But... you’ll slowly understand the true meaning of it yourself later."
Elodie opened her mouth in a sheer panic, closed it, and opened it again without making a sound. The muscles in her jaw felt completely paralyzed.
Raveena tilted her head slightly, her trademark mischievous glint flaring brightly in her eyes. "So... Raphael actually asked you if you’d be his girlfriend yesterday?"
Elodie remained mute, refusing to answer. The girl’s face was now the exact shade of a ripe tomato, ready to explode at any moment from sheer, unadulterated embarrassment.
"Do you want to know a little secret, Elodie?" Raveena leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. "Raphael... he really, really likes you."
SNAP!
The logical circuits in Elodie’s brain abruptly suffered a total, catastrophic short-circuit. Her entire face burned fiercely all the way to the tips of her ears.
Without being able to utter a single word of defense—even forgetting basic manners to say goodbye—the girl spun one hundred and eighty degrees and sprinted frantically out the classroom doors. She left behind Raveena, who was laughing in absolute satisfaction, celebrating her flawless teasing victory in the empty room.
The afternoon crawled into the evening at an agonizingly slow pace.
Raphael stood leaning his left shoulder against the cold stone pillar of the Seruni Academy’s main gates. The twilight breeze gently ruffled his messy hair, carrying the scent of wet earth and pine from the border forests.
He had been standing frozen in that exact spot since the dismissal bell rang half an hour ago. Raphael himself didn’t know what logical reason he had for waiting here. Maybe because he was simply used to waiting. Or... maybe because he still harbored a tiny, foolish shred of hope in his chest.
And his intuition proved correct.
Elodie’s silhouette slowly emerged from around the corner of the classroom corridors. Her footsteps were incredibly slow, both her arms hugging her notebooks tightly to her chest as if they were a physical shield.
The moment her brown eyes locked onto Raphael’s gray ones, Elodie’s footsteps hitched. The girl’s face instantly flushed crimson all over again.
Raphael pushed himself off the stone pillar, walking awkwardly toward her. "Hey."
"H-Hey..." Elodie replied so softly it was barely a whisper, turning her face toward the grass.
The two of them resumed walking side by side down the city sidewalks. The evening sun in the west was beginning its descent, painting the northern sky with melancholic hues of orange and violet.
By unspoken agreement, both chose to remain completely mute.
There was no crisp banter. No teasing. No arguing over multivariable math formulas or the genetic traits of root magic. There was only an incredibly dense silence. And the faces of two teenagers, both equally flushed, suppressing the raging storms in their chests.
Several times inside his uniform pockets, Raphael’s fingers twitched nervously. He desperately wanted to open his mouth, to string together words to clear up the misunderstanding.
But every time he threw a side glance at Elodie’s face—every time he saw her rosy-pink cheeks and her eyes staring fixedly at the asphalt ahead—all the vocabulary he had carefully structured in his brain evaporated into nothingness, blown away by the evening wind.
Elodie was suffering an equally agonizing internal torment. Every time she wanted to open her mouth to strike up a conversation, the echo of Lady Raveena’s whisper spun noisily in her skull: "He really, really likes you."
And in that split second, Elodie lost all her courage to even whisper. She chose to keep her lips tightly sealed.
They continued walking together through the slowly quieting evening city. Past the dim alley intersections. Past the taverns that were beginning to ignite their yellow mana-lamps. Past the ancient stone bridge over the water canal reflecting the early stars.
Not a single word was spoken between them. Yet, neither of them had the slightest intention of quickening their pace to reach their destination earlier.
Because on this beautiful evening... their final destination wasn’t a physical location marked on a map. It was the person faithfully walking right beside them.
Meanwhile, after several hours of traversing the roads of Northreach, the luxurious black sedan bearing the royal crest finally glided to a halt in front of the ice-stone borders of Frostmere, just as the evening sun slipped away from the horizon.
Rumina stepped out of the rear cabin first.
Instantly, a phenomenally piercing cold ambushed her skin—not the dry, biting chill she was used to in Iron Hearth, but a wet, freezing cold mixed with the glow of active mana crystal particles floating freely in the air.
Frostmere was an architectural masterpiece carved purely from obsidian rock and permafrost.
The towering buildings in this city were a silvery-gray, with pointed roof designs adorned by breathtaking natural ice stalactites. Everywhere she looked, chunks of active, sapphire-blue mana crystals were embedded neatly along the mining walls, the streetlamp posts, and even the fountain in the city square.
The city of ice sparkled beautifully like a colossal gemstone under the shower of the moonlight.
An honor guard in dark blue armor slammed the butt of his halberd against the ground, then rang a small silver bell in his hand.
"His Majesty King Lucian Sudrath and Princess Rumina Sudrath have arrived at the estate!!"
The sea of invited guests who had already packed the main hall of Countess Mira Frost’s palace instantly turned their heads toward the entrance in unison.
The lineup of high-class nobility, grand crystal merchant cartels, and high-ranking military officials of Frostmere immediately ceased their chatter, bowing their heads deeply to pay respects to their supreme sovereign.
Countess Mira Frost—a remarkably elegant middle-aged woman with silver hair topped by a tiara, draped in a luxurious midnight-blue gown—stepped gracefully forward to welcome them.
"Your Majesty King Lucian. And the beautiful Princess Rumina. The city of Frostmere feels exceptionally honored and blessed by your presence tonight," Countess Mira greeted with a warm, genuine smile.
Lucian returned the bow with a calm, authoritative nod. "Thank you very much for the warm invitation, Countess Mira. We are delighted to set foot in your beautiful city once again."
Rumina stood rigidly by her father’s left side, wearing her absolute best neutral, emotionless face.
Her sharp eyes immediately began actively scanning the banquet hall—estimating the total headcount of attending guests, calculating the budget expenditures for the ballroom decorations, and trying to figure out if there were any budget allocations from this old ally she could efficiently trim next year. This party is far too lavish. A massive waste of gold coins. Maybe after this I should have a serious discussion with—
"Princess Rumina."
An incredibly smooth, baritone greeting abruptly shattered all the mathematical calculations running in Rumina’s head.
A young man dressed in formal aristocratic attire was now standing tall right in front of her. His dark blonde hair was combed with impeccable, flawless neatness.
His eyes were a clear, icy blue—the strongest genetic hallmark of pure-blooded Frostmere nobility.
His posture was tall, athletic, and sturdy, with a polite, sweet smile carved onto his handsome face as he looked at Rumina.
"Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Adrian," the young man said, bowing deeply with profound respect. "Viscount of Eastern Frostmere. It is truly an extraordinary honor of a lifetime to meet you face-to-face tonight, Princess."
Rumina stared at the strange man before her with a flat, cold gaze utterly devoid of emotion. "Oh. Nice to meet you."
Lord Adrian didn’t look the least bit shrunken or intimidated by the arctic-cold reception from the Royal Head Treasurer. On the contrary, his smile grew even wider, brimming with enthusiasm.
"I... to be completely honest, I have admired all of your written work from afar for a very long time, Princess Rumina. The draft journals of the Northreach annual financial reports you release have always been my absolute favorite leisure reading. The strict budget efficiency methods you implemented in the border military logistics sector last year... it is a true administrative masterpiece. Pure genius."
Rumina blinked her eyes, stunned stiff.
"You... you read... my boring bundles of financial reports?" Rumina asked, her tone dripping with sheer disbelief.
"I dissected and studied every single line of its percentage pages without missing a single digit, Princess," Adrian answered confidently.
An incredibly awkward and bizarre silence abruptly froze between the two of them.
Rumina was genuinely stripped of all vocabulary to respond to such an insane confession. This handsome, strange man in front of her... read stacks of mind-numbingly boring state treasury reports? Purely out of his own personal volition and as a hobby in his free time? Gods... is the brain of the man standing in front of me suffering from some sort of nerve damage? Rumina wondered in pure bewilderment.
But before Rumina could string together a sarcastic retort, Lord Adrian had already carved that faint, incredibly genuine smile again.
And in that quiet second... deep within the very bottom of Adrian’s heart, an uncontrollable whisper of his conscience murmured softly as he gazed into Rumina’s eyes.
This woman... is actually a thousand times more beautiful in person.