“Stop when you’ve finished eating.”
Before she could even ask what was going on, the Grand Duke stood up and began striking the roots blocking their path with his sword to clear their path.
‘Why do you do that?’
Giselle asked with her eyes if she wanted to know, but she looked at Hazel and the Grand Duke alternately with amused eyes and just shrugged her shoulders.
‘Did I do something wrong?’
She followed him and kept looking at his complexion.
“Hazel, your feet are slippery. Be careful.”
The way he speaks was as friendly as usual, and the hand that holds her up on the steep slope was also kind. She didn’t think he’s angry, but his face was still dark.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then do you feel sorry for me at all?”
“…no.”
This was it. But what was it that made him feel sad? She thought carefully about what happened at the moment when the Grand Duke looked sad. I was chatting with Giselle while eating snacks. So maybe you were upset that she did something to Giselle but not to the Grand Duke? But what was such a thing?
‘Ah! There is such a thing.’
“Would you like some carrots, Your Highness?”
The moment she asked, the Grand Duke’s brow furrowed.
‘Okay, I guess this is it. If you want to eat it, just say it.’
She opened the bag and took out two pieces of carrots, but he didn’t take them and muttered with an even more sad look on his face.
“Giselle, whom you have only seen a few times, is Giselle, but I, who you have seen for years, am still ‘his highness’.”
“Ah…”
Was she completely mistaken? The carrot in her hand became embarrassing.
“Isn’t it time for you to call me by my name too? No, it’s past time.”
In fact, calling him Grand Duke or Highness was so common now that she couldn’t even think about it. But when she thought about it, she felt sad. That’s also true…
“I didn’t know you wanted to be called by name.”
Here, there were almost no cases of dating where there was a difference in social status, so this was partly because it was impossible to learn by seeing how other people used their titles.
“Of course…”
The Grand Duke paused while speaking.
“Oh, you don’t know the customs here.”
“Actually, there’s nothing like that that can be called a custom. Because it’s the feelings of the people you date.”
She only found out when Giselle muttered behind her. It seemed to be the same here and in Korea.
“He was waiting with excitement to see when you would call him by his name, but when Hazel called me by my name first, he got jealous. Is this it, Your Highness?”
“That’s right, Your Holiness. What on earth have you done to Hazel?”
“Oh my goodness. Since when did asking to be called by your name become considered a trick, Grand Duke?”
“Well. Her Holiness took Daniel away from me…”
“Elliot, that sounds very strange.”
Sir Daniel cleared his throat behind him.
“…You don’t realize that you have taken away a card from his lover, even being called by his name.”
It was hard not to laugh as she watched the cousins arguing and Sir Daniel looking embarrassed as he was caught between them.
“Hazel, I’m serious.”
The Grand Duke pulled her close and whispered in her ear.
“Whatever our relationship becomes, I don’t want you to be ‘His Highness’…”
At those words, she held out what she had been holding in her hand.
“Elliot, would you like some carrots?”
He laughed but didn’t take it. Wasn’t this it?
“Elliot, do you want some carrots?”
What was this? It was only when she briefly corrected his words that he smiled brightly and accepted the carrot.
“Thank you, Hazel.”
At that moment, Giselle muttered behind her.
“Oh no, it’s not a child…”
‘I know. Not a child… But it’s cute.’
A crypt with tangled roots, jagged crystals, and an occasional plant colony. No matter how many times she walked, the scenery was the same.
“Is there really no way out?”
“We might have to dig burrows like earthworms.”
“Oh, my leg hurts.”
As they got tired, they started looking for a place to camp today. After walking a little more, another plant colony appeared.
“Then rest here today…”
The Grand Duke was about to put down the firewood on his shoulder, no. Elliot paused. His eyes were on the strawberry vines far away from them.
“It’s a sign of eating.”
When she got closer, she saw that it was exactly as he said. There were dent marks on the strawberry. Sir Daniel looked at it and said to himself.
“Has it been eaten by bugs?”
“It seems that way.”
“It’s no big deal that there are bugs in the ground. Unless it’s a meat-eating bug…”
Her body trembled at Sir Daniel’s words.
“But this…”
Everyone’s eyes widened as Elliot lifted a vine. The end of the vine had been cut off with a sharp object.
“It means that there is a creature around here that is intelligent enough to cut strawberries with a knife.”
Giselle lowered her voice to a mumble, and she glanced at the fairies flying around the crystal.
“No way, a fairy…”
“No. I’ve never seen a fairy use tools.”
“Then is it true that there are people?”
After she finished speaking, everyone closed their mouths and looked around. Could there be more traces? Before long, Elliot looked down at the floor and motioned to us. As she approached, she saw clearly a half-crunched footprint on the muddy ground. It was a human footprint.
“Do people live here?”
“Then he might know the exit.”
“If they’re just trapped like us and can’t find a way out…”
“And if they only see us as strawberry thieves…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Was it fortunate or unfortunate that there are other people here?
“Once traces of people are found, it may be dangerous to spend the night here.”
Everyone agreed with what Elliot said. It was now dangerous to even leave traces that they were here. So, even though she ate strawberries for dinner, she had to hold them right on the vine and eat them instead of cutting them with a knife. Just like bugs did.
‘What is this?’
Then she walked again. This time, they stood in a row and their footprints overlapped as if they were one person. Then how much longer did she walk? It was when she started to lose feeling in her feet.
“Aaaah!”
A cry was heard from afar. It was clearly the cry of a human child. They stopped and hid behind the crystal. She held her breath and tried to guess the direction the sound was coming from…
“Mom!”
This time, she thought she could clearly hear the child’s voice calling for their mother, and then the sound of small, sturdy feet moving closer.
“What? It’s too light to be the sound of human footsteps.”
It was the moment Elliot was muttering. Something appeared about ten steps away. It was an ant the size of her leg.
‘Aaaah.’
It wasn’t just one. As if the crypt had intersected in front of me, a swarm of ants appeared from the left and disappeared again from the right. And they soon discovered the identity of the crying sound.
“Nah! Mom!”
What she saw before her eyes was truly a human child. Two ants were dragging a child who looked to be about four years old, biting him by the neck of his cloak.
“Hazel, use whatever magic you have.”
Before she could reply, Elliot drew his sword and rushed towards them. Sir Daniel and Giselle ran, and she followed. Elliot didn’t seem to be scared or disgusted by the large bug, so he jumped into the crowd of black ants and disappeared.
“Elliot!”
“I saved him!”
Before they could get close, she heard Elliot’s voice and her silver head popped up above the swarm of ants. There was a child hanging in Elliot’s arms.
“Run away!” he shouted, running this way with the child in one arm.
The rescue was over in the blink of an eye, but it was not an escape. The ants, deprived of their food, became angry and chased after them.
“Aaaah!”
“Come this way!”
They ran away, swinging their swords and shooting fireworks. The ant was so weak that it could be cut down in one go. However, no matter how weak they were, if they were fast and outnumbered, they would be pushed back.
“Do not come! Just go! Excuse me! Eat those strawberries over there! I have no taste!”
She stopped shooting fireworks randomly at the ants that were chasing her and started running as if she was possessed.
‘Wait a moment? Ants have a brain. Weren’t their brains pretty good too?’
But she thought she read it in a book. She gathered the mana flowing through her hands into her head. She adjusted her mana like tuning a radio frequency, and voila!
[Give us our meat!]
[Our meat!]
[Give it to us!]
The voices of the swarm of ants began to ring in her head like crazy. That makes sense.
[Hey. A brief truce! Let’s solve it through conversation!]
[The meat speaks.]
[No, I am not meat.]
[It’s talking meat. It’s more meat.]
[It’s meat, meat.]
[Because it’s not meat? Oh, that’s right. If you need meat, we can supply earthworm meat in large quantities. How about that?]
She tried to talk to the ants by shooting fireworks at them, but they didn’t even listen.
[For our underground Empire!]
[For the Empire!]
They could communicate, but at the same time they couldn’t communicate.
‘Perfect!’
Negotiations were broken. She snapped her fingers.
Thud!
A huge firewood fell from the air, crushing dozens of ants.
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Translator Note:
Hello there! This is RJR. I hope you liked it <3
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