episode_0076

Revealing skin was quite a shameful thing.

Especially if the person seeing the skin wasn’t someone you felt kindly towards.

Natasha couldn’t bring herself to like Royer. Wasn’t their very first encounter a situation where she suffered a grave humiliation?

Naturally, seeing him as unfavorable, he was practically someone she didn’t want to face.

Besides, he offered her a maid’s position, when she had only lived a life of being revered as a princess.

In her head, she thought she had to accept it for the sake of the Elven race.

But when she reconsidered it with her heart, it was received as quite insulting. There was no special reason.

Royer was the first to make her feel a sense of shame.

Even considering her position as a princess, bowing naked before others was a chilling experience.

But she did it.

Of her own accord.

Moreover, Royer seemed to have examined her body even in that situation.

She couldn’t help but be extremely angry.

But she didn’t even think about resisting.

What if she fell out of his favor?

That would mean the extinction of the Elven race.

Even without considering the Elven race, Oberon’s life, held hostage as he was, would be in danger.

In the end, there was nothing Natasha could do.

She could only hope that Royer wouldn’t treat her harshly.

“So, what do you want from me?”

Natasha’s eyes were clearly hostile. Since the clothes she was made to wear as a maid’s uniform were just scraps of fabric like this, it was natural that her reaction would be sharp.

“I don’t know why you’re being so harsh? Didn’t I lend you troops as you wished and promise to treat your husband as an honored guest?”

“······.”

What he said was right. So Natasha had even less to say.

She couldn’t say anything based solely on her own bad mood, as the other party was the emperor of a nation.

It was ambiguous to belittle him as a lowly human, as she was in a situation where she had requested help from that lowly human.

If she were to ignore Royer, wouldn’t she be in a situation where she had begged for troops while showing her naked body to the person she was ignoring?

Thinking that way seemed even more mentally exhausting.

In the end, she came up with something to rationalize the situation: she was simply a maid serving the emperor.

Even when she was in the Elven lands, she had briefly attended to the previous clan leader.

It was best to simply think of it that way now as well.

But Royer wasn’t that simple.

“First, relax your expression.”

Natasha frowned at the sudden shift to informal speech.

“Why are you speaking informally? Even if I’m a young elf, I’ve lived three or four times longer than you······Ugh!”

Natasha’s words were cut short.

It was because Royer immediately grabbed Natasha’s chin and glared at her with sharp eyes.

“It seems you still haven’t grasped your place. Act like a maid. Weren’t you just educated on that?”

“······Are you serious?”

“Using short speech.”

Royer picked up the riding crop that the chamberlain had left behind in one hand.

As soon as Natasha saw the riding crop, she remembered the pain she had felt earlier and momentarily flinched.

“You know since you were hit earlier. I plan to punish you every time your attitude as a maid is wrong.”

“······What authority do you have?”

“Would the Emperor of Aman, who has acquired the right to educate you, suffice?”

“······.”

Natasha stared intently into Royer’s eyes. His eyes were filled with greed and sadism.

Only then did Natasha realize that Royer had planned all of this.

Separating her from Oberon, too.

Making her wear these clothes as a maid’s uniform, too.

Finally, the emperor himself stepping forward to take over the education of the maid, too.

Everything had happened under Royer’s plan.

Thinking about that suddenly made her feel complicated.

“Now, let’s start with your manners as a maid. From now on, you must always use honorifics. If you don’t keep to honorifics, I’ll start the punishment right away, so look forward to it.”

“······.”

Natasha’s eyes were full of anger and resistance. They were still the eyes of an untamed wild horse.

Breaking that was, as expected, appropriate violence.

It was Royer who had always thought that violence was the most important means.

The same was true of the current situation.

Royer immediately moved the riding crop. The riding crop struck Natasha’s fleshy buttocks, which were standing still.

“Heuk!”

A red line mark was left on her pure white buttocks, and Natasha almost collapsed from the sudden, clear pain.

“Why all of a sudden······?”

“The answer was too slow. A maid must answer her master within 5 seconds of being spoken to. More than that, you just used short speech again.”

Royer raised the riding crop high once more. This time, he wondered if he should hit somewhere other than her buttocks.

But Natasha immediately lowered her waist and made a tearful voice, so his hand paused for a moment.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be careful from now on······.”

“······Yes, I hope this doesn’t happen again.”

Occasionally showing mercy as a master wasn’t a bad choice either.

More than anything, even if it wasn’t now, there would be countless opportunities to punish Natasha in the future.

Just spending time thinking about that was enjoyable enough.

Already, plans were slowly being made in Royer’s head about how it would be fun to play with Natasha.

Natasha, completely unaware of what would happen to her in the future, could only look at Royer with anxious eyes.

***

Oberon, who had been promised treatment as an honored guest, was assigned to a fairly large room.

“······It’s large. Unnecessarily large.”

To be honest, he liked the room, which was full of much more luxurious furniture and items than when he lived in the Elves’ land.

But he didn’t bother to show it.

He felt sorry that his wife, Natasha, was suffering in his place, and he felt a gaze watching him from the room as if he were being monitored from earlier.

“······Who is it that’s been staring since earlier?”

Oberon was a reasonably excellent Elven warrior. Naturally, his ability to sense his surroundings was quite good.

For him, the ominous gaze that he had been feeling since earlier was something that drew his attention.

Shuuk.

With the sound of the wind briefly cutting through the air, a woman appeared in front of Oberon.

“······Human?”

It was the land of humans, so it wouldn’t be strange for there to be humans. But that wasn’t what he meant.

The human in front of him was a human who didn’t seem to be able to use fighting or magic at all.

He couldn’t feel the flow of mana at all. Besides, the look in her eyes as she looked at him wasn’t that hostile either.

Finally, the clothes she was wearing didn’t seem appropriate for someone who had come out for battle.

“······I, I’m a maid who came to serve the honored guest.”

Yes, the maid outfit that maids wear was exactly what the girl in front of him was wearing.

Natasha had said that she was going to work as a maid, so she must be wearing clothes like that.

‘Natasha······.’

The fact that his wife was wearing those clothes wasn’t a big deal in itself. But the thought of Royer, whom he had seen earlier, serving her while wearing those clothes made him angry.

“······I, I’m sorry. You must be angry because I suddenly stared, right?”

“······Huh? Ah, no.”

The maid next to him seemed to have received an external stimulus due to the mana twisting around him for a moment due to his anger.

The maid looked up at Oberon with trembling eyes.

Seeing the trembling human, a feeling of apology arose in a corner of his heart.

The maid in front of him was not someone he should be angry at.

His anger should be directed at Royer.

‘Right, what did the human maid do wrong······.’

Oberon regretted his actions. Then, he reached out his hand to the human maid.

“I’m not angry because of you. I just remembered something that made me angry, so don’t misunderstand.”

“······That’s, that’s a relief.”

The maid had a relieved expression on her face. The situation was barely resolved with that.

“More than that, does that mean you’re the maid in charge of me?”

“······Ah, yes, that’s right.”

The maid showed a momentarily flustered face. It seemed she had forgotten that she had to introduce herself.

“My name is Leah, and I’m the maid who will be in charge of Master Oberon. If you need the help of a maid in any way, please call me.”

“······Help, huh. I don’t think I’ll have anything to call you for.”

Leah’s eyes started to well up at Oberon’s words.

“······No. Please call me. I can help you with anything. I can clean, and sometimes I can even take care of, uh, sexual needs.”

Oberon’s eyes sharpened again at the word “sexual needs.”

“What did you just say?”