And I noticed one more thing.

The Emperor had never said that Princess Claude’s brother, Prince Douglas, would marry or take over the throne.

Even if he said something similar, he had muddled the end of all those words with ‘may be’ and so on and had not made any definite assertions.

“Are you sure you’re really okay, Kaisar? You are sweating a lot, and it’s getting worse.”

“No, I’m fine… Yeah, I should be fine.”

No. The truth is that this is a bad situation, but it would be worse to admit it here and flag it with Princess Claude, so it is better to say it is okay in front of Princess Claude and deceive her.

“Should be… you see… the slaves told me that you don’t seem to be relying on others, trying to manage everything by yourself, even when you’re in pain. I also heard that the Sufia thing was really about protecting the Sufia, so you turned yourself into the bad guy… In fact, there is no doubt that all the incidents that have occurred recently to her, you, the Black-Masked One, are the one who saved her from them. Really, how clumsy you can be.”

“Haa? No, what are you talking about?”

“It must be my lucky day to see you so flustered at being caught red-handed. But aren’t you cornered enough that you’d show your dismay so easily to someone like me? You can’t handle it by yourself anymore, can you? Isn’t it time for you to rely on someone else?”

Princess Claude suddenly started talking about something strange, and I froze for a moment thinking, ‘What the h**l is she talking about?’ which she misunderstood and started to say even more weird things…

“Just in recent months, you have done so much for the Empire and the people. Things such as purging kidnappers, stopping a way with the Kingdom in advance, and protecting my brother in secret. I guess that’s how you have always been. Yet, not to get noticed, you had to play the role of a good-for-nothing to the public. If anyone were to find out, you never know what your rotten parents or younger siblings might do to you. Not even your family was on your side, and you had only your slaves to trust. But I am your slave now. If you say you can’t entrust your back to me unless I’m your slave, then I will remain your slave!”

Huh? What is she talking about?

Also, someone should tell Princess Claude that it’s a bad part of her to go straight with the hero’s move whenever she feels like it…

But it’s often said that there’s no medicine for stupidity.