Chapter 21: Fashionista Prince Wants Tea

The last few days have been very quiet and peaceful in Falsbane Kingdom. Now that the Dunamis family had finally packed up their entourage of war dogs and returned to their territory, King Aldrius could now breathe.

In his private quarters, Leander leaned against the windowsill, staring out over the empty courtyard.

He felt a bit bitter. Prussia hadn’t even bothered to tell him goodbye before she left.

He was sure she’d come see him again eventually... after all, they had gone dragon hunting together, shared tea, laughed, and even sat side-by-side at the auction. His hand even brushed against hers a few times, a feeling that always brought redness to his cheeks whenever he thought about it.

Leander touched his cheeks.

"Even now, I’m blushing..."

He’d completely forgotten about Lady Mariella.

His face darkened a little.

"She’s old news."

...

In another wing of the palace.

Queen Lucelia was singing a entirely different tune.

She was furious that Darius and his daughter hadn’t stayed for the official farewell gala. She’d fully intended to use that evening to push Leander and Prussia even closer together, but ultimately, she wasn’t bothered.

In her eyes, the deal was as good as done. They were already a couple, and her son was now the undisputed frontrunner for the throne. She spent her entire morning boasting about it to anyone who was willing to hear.

She even left the doors wide open so the palace maids would overhear, hoping the gossip would spread like wildfire through Gilishon and cross into the neighboring cities. The entire nation needed to know just how competent her son was.

Meanwhile, far removed from the royal posturing, Adonis was huddled in his cramped servant quarters.

Spread out across his narrow desk were detailed sketches of the dragon crucible, its surface had hundreds of intricate, glowing runic scripts.

A dragon crucible was engineered to contain the volatile power of golden fairy soil reacting with a dragon egg, but its primary function was as a refinement tool. An enchanter had to pour their mana into the inscribed runes to spark a spiritual fire, evenly cooking both the soil and the egg to awaken the fetal dragon within.

To pull it off, Adonis was currently trying to teach himself runic language from scratch.

From his webnovel knowledge, he knew there were seven distinct classifications of runes:

Dwarven runes crafted by the dwarves.

Elven runes, the broadest of the bunch.

Welkin runes by divine entities.

Dragon runes.

Utility runes by humans.

Dark runes by demon lords.

And the Ancient runes of forgotten, extinct civilizations.

Naturally, the crucible was inscribed with dragon runes.

To read them, you’d need to know the dragon runic language.

"I don’t know shit about these..." ಠ_ಠ ℴℴ𝘮

He slumped in his chair and sighed.

"To be fair, there’s no way the author would waste time designing an actual functional language for a webnovel that literally zero readers were ever going to learn."

He’d already thoroughly ransacked the royal library’s restricted archives and found nothing on dragon runes. It made sense; dragons weren’t native to Falsbane, and the kingdom had a bad history with the beasts.

Adonis bit his lip, absently fiddling with the rough, metallic lip of the crucible.

’I might be completely screwed if I can’t hatch this egg...’

Over a hundred runes were enchanted into the crucible’s body, meaning it was forged by a rainbow-class enchanter. To properly ignite the spiritual flame without detonating the egg, he needed to channel his mana through the runes in the exact sequence they were originally inscribed.

From number one all the way to one hundred.

"This is sooooo bad..."

Adonis groaned, throwing his arms up and collapsing backward from his chair onto his dusty bed.

"Is that really what you think of my new attire? How much ruder can you possibly get?!"

Adonis raised a brow. "Eh?"

He sat up on his rickety mattress.

Standing right in front of him was Prussia.

As usual, she has a murderous frown on her face.

But unlike usual, she was no longer wearing her revealing warrior attire... the dragon hides and beast furs that proudly displayed her fertile chest, muscles and shapely body.

Well... actually, her new outfit was still pretty revealing.

Adonis nodded satisfactorily.

’Since Prussia is my bodyguard and a potential future wife, if she stops staring at me like I’m some frail femboy, I had the palace maids design a custom swordsman attire for her. Yunno, to give her a less wild barbarian princess look and make her more like a heroic knight in shinning armor.’

Adonis grinned, secretly imagining her carrying him bridal-style in her strong, muscular arms.

With Prussia by his side, he’d finally be safe enough to venture out into high-level forests and dangerous dungeons to farm rare crafting materials and level up his enchantment skills.

’I need to rank up as fast as possible; I can’t stay copper-class forever. Enchanters are looked down on because we have a low ceiling in modern times, so becoming even gold-class will make me competent in the eyes of everyone.’

Not that he was thinking about politics right now.

Adonis dismissively waved his hand and admired her attire with a wide, shiny-eyed, puppy dog smile. He could still vividly recall the stress he’d endured to design this swordsman set for her.

Two days ago...

"The breastplate needs to be shaped to fit a 34F cup size!"

Adonis shouted like a madman as he slammed a charcoal sketch onto the worktable.

"Your Highness!"

One of the senior maids pleaded, wringing her hands.

"That is simply not how a cuirass is constructed! Shaping the metal with such prominent curves will ruin its ability to deflect incoming strikes and absorb impact!"

"Heh, allow me to educate you."

Adonis took a quill and drew a precise, mathematically labelled diagram of a 34F steel cuirass.

"If you leave a precise gap of exactly these centimeters right along the interior padding, the force distribution will make up for the structural curve, optimizing both impact absorption and kinetic balance! Then I’ll personally enchant the alloy with utility runes for heavy defense and light movement."

The young maids surrounding the table gasped as their eyes turned into hearts.

They can’t help but admire their beloved Fifth Prince.

"His Highness is not only divine, he’s a genius!"

"He cares so much about functional safety!"

Adonis waved away their praises with a smile.

Back to the blueprints!

"Now, for the waist and lower body. Her waist is 54 centimeters and her hips are 83 centimeters. The belt needs to be tailored to these exact dimensions so the cinching brings out her hip line while sexing up—uhm, accentuating her thighs."

He sketched her thighs with explicit detail.

The maids stood in shock.

Point is, they were all helplessly jealous.

"Your Highness... can you tell us who this woman is?"

"Huuuu, that’s so unfair~"

"Prince Adonis, please! Give US that kind of attention!"

Adonis chuckled as he raised his hands to palacate the rising noises of the pouting maids.

"Everyone, relax. It’s... a gift! For one of my sisters! Who knows when they’ll come to visit!"

"Is it for Princess Claire?!" a maid shouted from the back.

"Uh... one of the NOT crazy sisters."

And that was how Adonis had ended up designing the custom armor Prussia was currently wearing.

...

Prussia looked down at her extremely short, pleated combat skirt, pinching the hem and lifting it up slightly to check the fit which momentarily exposed the lace edge of her black blouse beneath.

"Hmm. The skirt is a bit too short."

Adonis’s eyes sparkled like stars.

’As it should be!’

Prussia folded her arms tightly under her chest and gave him a stern, stone-cold look.

"So? How does it look?"

Adonis shook his head in disappointment.

"That’s not sweet at all. You’re supposed to be romantic and shy and sexily innocent when you ask! Like, ’Oh, master... how does this look on my body? P-, Please be honest, but gentle...’ like that next time, okay?"

If he could act like a dandere, maybe he can also give her some Oscar-winning theatre performance.

Prussia shook her head in disbelief.

"Falsbane men are truly scum of the earth. The more I speak with you, the more disappointed I am in myself for falling victim to your schemes."

Adonis yawned loudly, swinging his legs over the edge of his rickety bed and getting to his feet.

He waved a hand lazily at her.

"Whatever. I have somewhere to be. Just remember, no one knows—"

"I understand. No one knows I’m hiding in the palace! And you’ll tell me when I can finally reveal myself! You don’t have to repeat it every single second like I’m mentally challenged!"

Seeing Adonis ignore her outburst as he casually turned toward the door, Prussia narrowed her eyes.

"You’re scheming something, aren’t you?"

Adonis ignored her still, stepped out into the hallway, calling back over his shoulder:

"Clean the room up while I’m out. And use your fire cores to draw me a hot bath."

"You—!"

Prussia’s face boiled red at his casual orders. Unable to hold her temper, she lashed out and kicked over a cheap wooden vase, shattering it against the floorboards.

"Bastard!"

"Clean that up too!" (ᗜ _ ᗜ)

Adonis shouted back from further down the hallway.

Prussia snarled as she raised her fist and punched a solid stone wall so hard it cracked.

...

Out in the royal gardens.

The afternoon sun was shinning.

Queen Lucelia sat sipping imported tea with two of her closest friends since her teenage days.

"Oh, it was quite the triumph."

Lucelia poshly boasted, delicately setting her teacup down with a smug smile.

"My Leander will undoubtedly be the next king. All of the princes were given a fair chance to charm Lady Prussia, of course, but Leander was the only one capable of succeeding! They share the exact same passions... dragon hunting, tea, all of it!"

Her friends nodded with excited smiles.

One leaned in to speak.

"Prince Leander is such a handsome and remarkably capable young man. I truly doubt anyone in the realm could possibly be a better choice for Lady Prussia than him, wouldn’t you agree?"

Lucelia nodded. "Of cou—"

But she’s interrupted by a sudden, calm voice.

"Who knows? There’s always a better choice."

The three ladies paused and turned their heads toward the steps of the gazebo.

Adonis stood there with a graceful smile.

Queen Lucelia instantly frowned.

Suddenly, the tea in her mouth is bitter.

"You... what are you doing here?"

Adonis tilted his head innocently.

"Oh, you know, bit of this and that. I just came to join my dear Royal Mother for a cup of tea."