Chapter 50: Love, According to a Very Biased Dead Emperor

We left the trial chamber with awkward silence.

I know I said that being embarrassed was no longer an issue to me.

But…

Having all your fantasies and thoughts for a specific person get revealed… and for it to be revealed to the person being fantasized was another thing entirely.

But I wasn’t that much of a wimp that I would let that get me down.

I used to be one of the world’s greatest assassins.

A killer of many.

A man with a thousand faces.

I definitely had weirder moments than… this.

But it seems Evelina had a much harder time coping with what she saw.

While she wasn’t ignorant about stuff like that, in fact, she was fairly desensitized to it, knowing she was one of the region’s most popular noble women, it was a skill that she needed if she wanted to survive noble society.

But being exposed to it directly was a completely different thing, especially if what she saw had her face and personality down to the very specifics.

Even a villainess would break character.

“So, what’s the next trial?”

She tried to break the silence, clearing her throat.

“I thought you read my mind already?”

“I decided not to dig too deep when it came to this place; it would be rude of me to ruin a date’s plan.”

The more time we spent walking to the next chamber, Evelina grew even redder and redder, her mind slowly comprehending what she saw.

Usually, I would stay silent, wait for her to come to terms with her thoughts like a good servant.

But just like she said, this was a date where our usual dynamic would be temporarily null.

I’m not going to waste it.

“Now you know how much I love you.”

“Yes… much more than I expected to be honest.”

“Did you expect something else?”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”

We both entered the next chamber, Evelina walking faster than usual as she tried to avoid close contact with me due to sheer embarrassment.

“You even had my entire personality locked; I expected a more… extravagant version of me as most people had.”

Her tone was far softer than usual, despite the weirdness of it all, having someone know everything about her, from her cruelty, even to the speck of softness, and still loving her despite all that.

It affected her much more than the usual obsessed men who took an interest in her.

“Of course not, I would never love someone that much when I don’t know everything about her, let alone a fake version of that person.”

I followed closely behind, slowly closing the distance.

“Fair, but I’m still surprised you know so much about me.”

She looked at me briefly, a small warning hidden behind her gaze.

“Because most die before they do.”

“And I’d gladly kill them for you.” I leaned closer until I was inches away from her face.

And to that she smiled, but not before getting a flashback to another embarrassing thing she saw within my mind.

“R-Right…”

CRUMBLE.

The moment we crossed a certain threshold within the chamber, the exit was blocked, the same magic and process as the last one.

But as expected from a dungeon with this kind of theme.

The test from the second chamber wasn’t hard at all.

The first one, at least.

[It knows no bounds]

“That’s it?” She asked.

“Think you can decipher it without needing any help?”

“Of course I can.”

Evelina looked at the overall layout of the chamber.

At the bottom of the text were two chalices, the left one being adorned with various gemstones and engravings, the other being simple silver with no grand design.

And all around them were multiple statues, one of a crowned man and the other a woman in rags.

The answer was obvious; it wanted us to show that our love surpassed differences in class and rank.

And we were perfect for it, I was a son of a baron, and she was the daughter of a duke.

As for lovers who stumbled across this place who were of the same status?

Well… they were screwed.

Because why care about them?

It’s not like love can come from various walks of life, right!?

Yeah… this was a fairly badly designed tomb just meant for Julius and Lillian to have a moment.

Just because they were trials didn’t mean they were fair; creators of this kind of thing always had some sort of bias.

“You know…” Evelina finally spoke after a few seconds of thinking. “This doesn’t really feel like something that actually tests someone’s love.”

SLASH!

Using dark magic, she sliced open her palm and let her blood spill over the more ornate chalice.

“Chalices, if there was anything special about them, it should be the strange number of times they were used in history for rituals that involved blood.”

“It makes solving puzzles easier, though.”

I chuckle, doing the same, but for the more simplistic cup.

And here lies the actual puzzle…

Good thing she didn’t dig deeper into my mind.

It would have spoiled the surprise.

[IT KNOWS NO BOUNDS]

The hovering text grew larger and larger, the statues surrounding us responding to its message as the male statues began to move.

CRACKLE!

“What!?”

“We’re surrounded.”

“I’ll take the left; you take the right!”

Evelina commanded without hesitation, just like she always had, but there was something wrong.

Nothing was appearing in her mind, not a single spell formula, even for the most basic ones.

“I-I can’t use my magic!?”

The statues’ movements suddenly spiked as they heard Evelina’s concern, a hidden verbal command that triggered their aggression for those who dared take on the second chamber’s trial.

“Begone!”

The nearest statue near Evelina yelled out, lunging to her with incredible mobility despite its stony structure, attempting to take her out with a swift punch to the head.

“Damn it!”

Evelina covered her eyes and braced herself for the blow.

CRACK!

“H-Huh!?”

She opened her eyes again, surprised that she was unharmed.

“I’ll take care of them.”

I moved past her, catching the statue’s fist with my bare hands before it reached her.

Unknown to Evelina, this was another one of the long-dead emperor’s biases about love, turned into an unfair trial for those who didn’t know the civilization’s history.

Because for the Emperor, what he saw as a truly worthy love was one between both a warrior and a mage or a noble and a commoner.

A direct mirror to his actual relationship with the woman in rags presented in the statue, being the mage.

And in this test… it wanted to test out if the couple who stumbled on his trials shared the same dynamic as them.

’This test is just as dumb as I remembered!’

CRACK!

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