Chapter 10

It had been more than a week since applications for the husband recruitment began, yet the line showed no sign of getting shorter.

If anything, as word spread, even more people gathered. Some were even arriving by ship in a hurry from foreign countries.

If I win this competition—if I become the husband of Countess Riat Pshikia—I’ll earn enough money to comfortably support not just three generations, but ten!

Countless people flocked to the County with dreams like that in their hearts.

As a result, the entire flow of the Empire’s economy had begun to revolve around the County.

It was an economic effect Riat had never anticipated.

But naturally, there were more problems as well.

Just as the man she had encountered the other day had warned, petty crimes had begun occurring throughout the territory.

It started with theft, followed by property damage and even assault.

Riat had temporarily hired additional members of the city watch, but the territory was desperately short on manpower.

The absence of a knight order in the County made the problems even more frequent.

Riat irritably checked through the documents and muttered,

“When is the Imperial Palace going to send the knights? How long has it been since I requested them?”

“Weren’t you uninterested in managing the territory?”

“If I don’t solve this problem, the people here will be the ones getting hurt. And……”

Riat clicked her tongue.

“If I can’t handle it, those people will come crawling back and start saying I’m unfit to be a countess and that they’ll take over for me.”

They were people who had reached depths even Riat hadn’t thought possible.

People usually used the word bottomless abyss when describing despair.

Riat, however, reserved the term for her father and brothers.

She buried her head on the table, right on top of the mountain of paperwork.

She was beginning to feel sick of the crisp smell of paper.

“I want to go outside.”

“You want to go undercover again?”

“No. The annex! There should be plenty of people there who could become my husband right now, so why am I buried under paperwork here? I want to fall in love!”

“……”

Sicarius gave her an unfiltered look that seemed to say she was watching an extraordinary stage play.

But Riat rose from her seat like a tragic heroine, staggering dramatically.

She had claimed she had never seen a play before, yet her acting was good enough to step onto a stage immediately.

“Ahh, I have to go meet my beloved. And since there are so many candidates gathered there making a commotion, wouldn’t it be a good idea to show my face at least once and heighten the tension between them?”

“As I always say, you’re remarkably good at coming up with plausible excuses.”

“Thank you for complimenting my noble refinement, Sis.”

The mansion’s annex was so vast and magnificent that the name annex hardly seemed appropriate.

It was large enough to be called a castle in its own right.

Yet the crowds packed tightly throughout the grounds made it painfully clear just how many people had descended upon the County.

Other than when she had chosen the annex as the application site before starting the competition, Riat had never set foot here.

So she looked around the courtyard with a somewhat unfamiliar feeling.

She could see plenty of people whenever she looked outside from the main mansion, but seeing the crowd in person made its sheer size overwhelming.

So many people came because they want to marry me.

For some reason, Riat felt shy.

Her cheeks flushed as she smiled.

Sicarius saw that smile and simply shook her head without a word.

She had deliberately not announced that the Countess was coming to the annex.

It was simply to grant her master’s strange wish to hide behind a tree and shyly watch the proceedings.

Of course, if a woman in a dress appeared in a place packed entirely with men, or if someone who obviously looked like a noble appeared from within the Count’s estate, it would be obvious who she was.

But Sicarius deliberately chose not to point that out.

Riat clearly had no intention of subtly revealing her identity—she genuinely hadn’t realized how obvious she was being.

Sicarius wanted to preserve that peculiar innocence.

Absolutely not because she couldn’t be bothered.

“Sis, look over there. So many people really did come.”

“Not only are they coming from the Irmak Empire, but people are traveling here from distant countries across the continent. Naturally, there would be this many.”

“Oh! Love that crosses borders!”

“……”

What am I supposed to do with this master?

Sicarius stared seriously at the back of Riat’s head and swallowed a sigh.

There were an enormous number of people waiting in the courtyard to apply.

Quite a few had already submitted their applications and were now watching the newly arriving competitors carefully.

Perhaps because the idea of a competition to find a husband was so absurd and amusing, the participants occasionally exchanged light conversation.

But the overall atmosphere was unmistakably one of wariness.

There could only be one man who would become the Countess’s husband.

As she observed the situation, Sicarius suddenly wondered what she would do if Riat abruptly changed her mind and decided it was perfectly acceptable to have several husbands.

Normally, Sicarius wouldn’t waste even a second on such a pointless concern.

But perhaps Riat was rubbing off on her.

She couldn’t shake the anxiety.

What if she says that since her fortune keeps growing, she’ll give the full one billion gold to her primary husband, but offer less to secondary husbands and choose several of them?

The thought alone made her vision go dark.

Whether Riat knew that Sicarius was seriously worrying about such a thing or not, she happily watched the people gathered in the courtyard.

But that amusement soon turned into surprise.

“Oh! He really came to apply?”

It was the black-haired man she had encountered several days ago when she had gone undercover in the plaza.

The man whose eyes were unmistakably a dark green, yet somehow reminded her of a lush blue-green forest.

The man who had given her that strange sense of déjà vu.

Although the feeling she had experienced then had completely disappeared now, Riat was still somewhat pleased to see him again.

“But why is he only applying now?”

“There are so many applicants that people have to wait their turn. He probably received a waiting number and only reached the front of the line today.”

“I see.”

Riat nodded as she answered, then suddenly became aware of his appearance again.

Until now, she had thought the other applicants were reasonably handsome—almost suspiciously so.

But after seeing this man, everyone else’s looks suddenly seemed to drop by an entire level.

His clothes were still somewhat shabby.

A slightly worn beige blouse and dark navy trousers.

He was dressed neatly enough, but compared to the other applicants who had arrived in stylish, carefully chosen outfits, he looked relatively poor.

Of course, once his face was taken into consideration, his clothes were hardly a disadvantage at all.

Riat was happily admiring his face when, after finishing his application, the man suddenly collided with someone as he left the registration area.

Judging by the way it happened, the other person had deliberately stepped into his path.

“Ha. Look at this guy. He came here to apply without even dressing properly. Doesn’t he have even a shred of shame?”

“He thinks he can catch the Countess’s eye just because he’s got a decent face. Isn’t he embarrassed?”

The men blocking his path seemed to have been observing the other applicants for quite some time.

They appeared to be sizing up the competition in advance, picking out anyone who looked easy to intimidate, then provoking them in hopes of making them run away.

Curious about how Riat would react, Sicarius glanced sideways at her.

Riat was clutching the tree and watching with sparkling admiration.

“This is what a fight over the person you love looks like……!”

……

Is this competition really going to be all right?

Sicarius seriously began wondering again.

Meanwhile, the two men surrounding the black-haired man continued to mock him with snickers.

Seeing that he merely stared at them without reacting, they seemed to decide that if they intimidated him just a little more, he would run away.

One of the men, dressed so extravagantly that it hurt the eyes just to look at him, poked the black-haired man’s shoulder with his index finger.

“I’ve seen all sorts of people here, but you’re the first one who’s made it so painfully obvious that you’re here to mooch off someone.”

“You think you’re any different?”

“What?”

“The clothes you’re wearing right now—no, even if you added up all the money in your house, it wouldn’t come anywhere close to the prize money offered by this competition. Isn’t that why you came?”

“You little—!”

“If you think about it, everyone here is basically trying to mooch off the Countess. So why are you so desperate to introduce yourself?”

The black-haired man tilted his head slightly as he answered.

There was an easy confidence in his manner, as though he were graciously allowing these people to speak their minds before bothering to respond.

Sicarius was now thoroughly entertained by the scene.

Riat was, too.

Although Riat’s eyes were practically sparkling with admiration over the competition between romantic rivals!

“You seem to think that because you have a mouth, you can say whatever you want……”

“Someone was bragging about having a mouth right in front of me, so I thought I’d use mine too. Is that a problem? And you picked a fight with me for not dressing properly, but why didn’t you two bother to dress up your faces before coming here?”

“You crazy bastard!”

Perhaps realizing he was losing the verbal battle, one of the men finally threw a punch.

The black-haired man clicked his tongue and casually leaned backward, avoiding it.

It was a simple movement, but it revealed that he was quite skilled in martial arts.

“You threw a punch just because you got a little angry. Do you really think someone this emotional can become the Countess’s husband? You should be grateful if you even make it past the preliminary round. Did you think dressing like a peacock would be enough to get you through?”

“Grab that bastard!”

“I’ll pray to god that if we happen to face each other in the preliminary round, your looks will improve even slightly by the time it happens. Actually, I’m quite close with god.”

He easily dodged another man charging at him from behind and spoke with a laugh.

He moved as lightly as someone brushing away a fly, while the other men gradually began to pant for breath.

“You! I’ll make sure you—!”

Then one of the men finally pulled a dagger from inside his clothes.

But the black-haired man didn’t see it because he was busy throwing the man who had suddenly grabbed him from behind over his shoulder.

The dagger flew toward him.

As though sensing it somehow, the black-haired man nimbly dodged.

But a thin cut appeared across his pale cheek, like a fine crack running through porcelain.

“His face!”

At the same moment, Riat shouted like a bolt of lightning and shot out from behind the tree.

She immediately rushed over to the black-haired man and cupped his face in both hands.

Her gray eyes were filled with shock.

“Huh? You’re……”

Whether or not the man was surprised by the familiar face appearing before him, Riat carefully examined his injury.

It wasn’t even bleeding, and the wound would disappear without a trace within three or four days.

But Riat couldn’t tolerate seeing a mark on a face she had taken such a liking to.

“How dare you cause such a disturbance at this sacred registration site.”

The sudden appearance of a female noble caused murmurs and bewildered looks to pass through the crowd.

Most of the applicants had come to enter the competition to become Countess Pshikia’s husband without ever seeing her face.

But now, an incredibly beautiful woman wearing an expensive dress had appeared inside the estate.

And more importantly, she had referred to the current situation in an icy voice as “such a disturbance.”

That alone made it clear who she was.

“Competition between participants is inevitable, but you must not go so far as to harm one another.”

The Riat who had been enthusiastically watching the fight as “a battle over the person you love!” had vanished without a trace.

Sicarius estimated that 99.9 percent of Riat’s anger came from the fact that the man whose face had finally passed her standards had gotten a cut on his cheek.

“You two are disqualified. Leave this place immediately.”

“W-What?! But, Your Excellency?! How can you—! We haven’t even taken the test yet!”

“You’re talking back to me?”

“Excuse me……?”

“Did you just talk back to me?”

Her tone was as gentle as could be.

Yet the sheer authority contained in her voice brought complete silence over the crowd.

With her chin raised proudly and her gray eyes coldly looking down at the men, Riat looked every bit the noblewoman.

The atmosphere alone was enough to make the men realize their mistake.

Not only had they talked back to a Countess, but they had even raised their voices at her.

It was practically equivalent to committing an offense against a noble.

“We, we……”

“You’ve demonstrated in every possible way that you’re nowhere near the standard required for this competition.”

Riat smiled brightly and tilted her head.

It was an extraordinarily beautiful smile, but unmistakable disgust filled her eyes.

Sicarius signaled toward the two men with a gesture of drawing a blade across her throat.

The servants from the registration area had come out because of the disturbance.

Sicarius was telling them to cut off the two men’s heads.