[Confession (Failure) Strategy (2)]

“Lilith?”

“Yes, Agnes.”

“I thought you just said we were going to buy clothes for her to change into.”

“Yes, I did.”

“…Are we really here to buy clothes?”

“Yes, we are.”

“…”

Agnes looked around with a confused expression, having trouble understanding my answer.

I could fully understand her reaction. After all, the place I had brought Lilia to wasn’t a clothing store or fabric shop, but an item workshop that sold weapons and armor.

“O-Ohhhh!”

Meanwhile, Lilia, still not harboring any suspicion toward me whatsoever, was eagerly looking around as soon as we entered the workshop, like a child in a Department Store at Christmas. She really did seem to have a carefree mind.

“Ohh… I feel some mysterious, unknown power from this spear. How can such a long, solid object be so light…?”

“You’ve got a good eye, miss. That’s quite a masterpiece, even in our workshop.”

“H-How much is it, shopkeeper? With this spear, I could surely get first place in the Hunting Festival…”

“Two gold coins.”

“…What?”

“I told you, it’s a masterpiece. Two gold coins. Can’t haggle on this one.”

“…”

Even with her muscle-brained personality, Lilia seemed to know better than to shamelessly make a fuss, quietly returning the spear to its original place.

Two gold coins are equivalent to about 5 to 6 million won (approx. $3,600 – $4,300) in our original world, so her reaction was understandable.

No matter how you look at it, 6 million won (approx. $4,300) for a single spear is a bit excessive.

Besides, the quality of items available from this “early-game weapon shop” workshop was essentially all the same. 

These were items that no one would ever buy at full price, as their performance was inferior not only to end-game equipment but also to gear obtained from monsters or dungeons in the mid-game.

The spear Lilia just held would likely be replaced naturally within 1-2 years anyway, so there was no need to desperately spend an exorbitant amount on it.

I hadn’t brought Lilia here to fit her with equipment. I brought her to at least put her in some decent plate armor instead of those rags.

Since it was just for a confession, there was no need to buy something of exceptional quality. Just making sure it looked the part was enough.

“Lilia, stop getting distracted by other things over there and come here.”

“…Yes, Senior Lilith.”

Lilia approached me with a regretful expression as she moved away from the spear rack. With her standing in front of me, I led her to a pile of scrap metal gathered in one corner of the workshop.

“Shopkeeper, how much are these items here?”

“What? Those are just scraps I’ve collected to take to the blacksmith later. What do you want with that junk?”

“I have a use for them.”

“Planning to use them as materials or something? Any random piece is 30 copper coins!”

One, two, three, four, five, six… all together, it would be about 2 silver coins, wouldn’t it?

While a gold coin or two would certainly be a burden even for me, one or two silver coins were an expense I could easily bear for a junior. After all, even 50,000 won (approx. $36) would be cheap to see that Hero flustered and panicking.

With that thought, I took out several “clothes” from the pile of scrap metal in the corner of the workshop and handed them one by one to Lilia.

“Try these on one by one. Since they’re metal plates, we need to check if they fit now to avoid problems later.”

“Understood!”

“Y-You can just put them on over your clothes! There’s no need to take off those rag-like clothes first!”

“Ah, yes!”

I hurriedly stopped Lilia, who was about to strip right there in the store, and had her put the plate armor on over her clothes.

Lilia’s everyday clothes, which barely covered more area than underwear, were gradually overlaid with rusty plate mail. Given her physique, even with just the upper and lower body armor, the imposing presence was considerable.

“Wow…”

“H-How is it?! D-Do you think this will help seduce a man?!”

“…Overall, it isn’t bad, but this isn’t enough. Let’s try on the rest of the pieces, too.”

“What? You mean I need to wear more?”

“It’s full plate mail, so of course you need to wear gauntlets, greaves, and shoes too. Just wearing the top and pants isn’t enough.”

“Ah, yes!”

As Lilia picked up pieces of rusty trash—I mean, plate mail—one by one from the scrap heap and put them on, Agnes muttered with an uneasy expression.

“…Lilith, is this right?”

“What?”

“You said you’d dress Lilia in sophisticated clothes that would catch a man’s eye. But this looks like something an undead soldier who died in battle would wear.”

“No, Agnes. How could you say such a harsh thing? Are you saying Lilia looks like a skeleton soldier right now?”

“…You’re the one who dressed her like that.”

“Well, you’ll see. I’m not dressing her like this without a plan.”

Agnes’s critique of my fashion sense didn’t change my plan at all. It was pointless to discuss fashion with Agnes, who always wore clothes provided by the Elizabeth family whenever she was in casual clothes.

After putting rusty metal pieces on her body one by one and finally donning a helmet, Lilia was transformed into a perfect medieval knight (well, she’d be considered one 200 years ago).

If she went out into the streets like this, even if we lost her in the middle of the market, we’d probably find her soon enough. She’d likely leave a trail of rusty metal powder wherever she went.

“T-This is the outfit to seduce a man, huh…”

“…It really doesn’t seem like it.”

“Oh really? Then what kind of outfit does the Seduction Genius, Agnes, suggest?”

“…Huh?”

“Surely, Agnes, you must have a better idea to say such things. You wouldn’t deny the outfit I coordinated for Lilia without having a proper opinion, would you?”

“…I-I don’t know. A-Actually, looking at it again, it seems okay. Everyone has different tastes after all…”

Agnes quickly realized that offering her own opinion was impossible and hastily backtracked.

With this, all opinions at the scene were controlled by me. …Well, they already were from the beginning.

“I’ll take everything she’s wearing!”

The workshop owner looked at me with somewhat pitying eyes after seeing Lilia’s appearance, but I ignored it.

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

Needless to say, I never intended to have Lilia confess to Gyeongmwajogyegigwat while wearing this rusty set of full plate armor.

Well, such an outfit would certainly do its job in terms of surprising the Hero, but if we showed up looking this extreme, he might sense something was off and run away before even receiving the confession.

If that happened, even Lilia would question what I had done to her. She would surely wonder why someone would run away just at the sight of her outfit when she had trusted and followed my advice.

There was nothing more foolish than earning the resentment of a barbarian. Therefore, my strategy for Lilia’s confession failure had to induce a failure that she could accept without harboring any resentment toward me.

“Lilia, could you bend down a bit? I can’t reach your head.”

“Huh? Ah, yes.”

Though a bit confused by my request to bend down, Lilia awkwardly crouched in front of me.

I placed my hands on her helmet and immediately used Clean to remove all the rust and dirt from it in one go.

“…Aha.”

From the head to the upper body, gauntlets, lower body, greaves, and shoes—one by one, I removed the rust, revealing clean full plate mail. Agnes nodded as she belatedly realized what I was doing.

While it became much cleaner after several uses of Clean, Lilia’s transformation wasn’t complete yet. I had only removed the rust and dirt; countless tiny scratches still remained all over the armor.

Now was the time to demonstrate the true value of the support magic I had learned so far.

The support spell Sharp Blade isn’t just used to increase the attack power of blades. Of course, it’s most commonly used that way, which is why it’s called Sharp Blade, but the fundamental nature of this spell is to “smooth surfaces and polish them.”

I used Ventilation to increase the power of my magic, then used Sharp Blade to make Lilia’s entire armor shine brightly. After that, I used Clean one more time to complete the process with a perfect finish.

Done this way, it would be processed as using Clean on a polished surface, allowing the armor to maintain some of its shininess even after the effect of Sharp Blade wore off.

“There we go, Miss Lilia. You look much prettier now.”

“O-Ohhhh…! You’re amazing, Senior Lilith! You made this old armor that I would have given up on shine so brightly… I admire you for using so many spells to maintain equipment!”

“This is nothing special.”

“…But if you were going to do this, couldn’t you have done it in the store? Why did we need to hide in this back alley?”

“What are you saying, Agnes? If we had shown the store owner how we were fixing up this rusty equipment, he might have changed his mind and demanded 20 silver coins instead of 2. Don’t you know that until we buy it, it’s not our property yet?”

“…You’re right. I thought you brought her out looking like this because you had some kind of grudge against her.”

“How could that be, Senior Agnes?! There’s no way Senior Lilith would have any grudge against me! Please don’t doubt the senior’s pure intentions!”

“…A-Anyway, now that we’ve got the clothes done, let’s work on your confession phrase next. I’ll prepare a confession that will surely make the senior you like fall for you.”

“Yes!!”

It was a moment when her unnecessarily energetic and loud response made my conscience prick me strangely.

…But it’s a confession that’s going to fail anyway. I guess it doesn’t matter if I play a little prank.