episode_0106

“Oh! I wondered what the Red Fox Mercenary Corps’ assault captain wanted with a one-on-one dinner with this Antonio, but that’s the reason!”

On the second day of Eugene guarding Vivian,

he requested a one-on-one dinner with Antonio, the commander of the Iron Cross Knights.

Originally, it could be seen as a rude proposal, but since Eugene was in charge of Vivian’s security,

Antonio, who had an obligation to cooperate with him as much as possible, made it possible.

Antonio was having dinner with Eugene in his personal barracks when

he heard the reason Eugene had requested his current position and looked quite intrigued.

“After about a day, I realized that I needed to know not only simple force but also the person I’m guarding, Commander Antonio. I feel like there are some subtle details required, like guarding the heart? So, I first sought advice from Davis, and he recommended that talking to Commander Antonio was definitely the right thing to do.”

Eugene Schnyder wanted to do his best in his security work, whatever the motivation for starting it was.

So, he spent about a day figuring out how things were going.

As a result, he thought he needed to know something about Vivian.

A bodyguard inevitably has to play the role of an on-site executive secretary.

You need to know what the person you’re serving dislikes, what they like, what background they have,

to a certain extent, so you can fill those things.

In the meantime, the information about Vivian that Eugene heard from Jeanne was too insufficient.

All he knew was Vivian’s appearance when she had a bad relationship with Jeanne when she was young.

So, he consulted with Davis, and he heard that the knight commander Antonio currently had the most connection with Vivian.

“I guess you could say that. Anyway, I had a certain level of connection with our young lady, no, the head of the Vivian Merchant Guild, Vivian’s father.”

Antonio has a connection with Vivian’s father, Alexis Saint-Pierre.

The mercenary group he was in before joining the Blackhawk Mercenary Corps and Alexis Saint-Pierre had quite a bit of interaction.

Since Antonio was the leader of the mercenary group, he spent enough time having meals separately and building relationships.

Vivian was born at that point, and until Antonio moved to the Blackhawk Mercenary Corps, he continued to have deep exchanges with the Saint-Pierre family.

‘The fact that he momentarily said “young lady” means they were closer than I thought?’

The depth of that relationship was strongly felt by Eugene in Antonio’s slip of the tongue.

In the meantime, Eugene saw Antonio apologizing to Vivian several times.

Of course, the internal spy problem is a serious matter, but he thought that he was being unnecessarily humble.

And that was a pattern created because there was a personal superior-subordinate relationship between the two.

“First of all, our assault captain knows that Vivian is the daughter of a duke, right?”

“Yes, I heard that at the first meeting.”

With that, Antonio laid the groundwork with a rather serious feeling.

“In fact, Vivian is from a family even higher than a duchy. She is a relative of the imperial family.”

After that, he told Eugene the most essential information about Vivian.

“I’m telling you this for the first time, Assault Captain Eugene Caesar. Vivian told me in advance to actively cooperate, so that’s why I’m telling you. She doesn’t usually say such things. She’s a person who sets guidelines very thoroughly, telling me what to say and what not to say. In my opinion, it seems that she trusts Eugene a lot, which is why. She’s not someone who would show trust so quickly.”

The reason for making such a decision is

that Vivian has set her trust in Eugene higher than before.

And that high level of trust is a fresh shock to Antonio, who has been watching Vivian from the sidelines to a certain extent.

Wasn’t Vivian someone who suddenly lost her father?

Therefore, there are hardly any cases where she suddenly raises the trust level for someone.

Especially for someone she hasn’t known for very long.

‘It’s difficult…’

After hearing that, Eugene, who was trying to figure out Vivian’s true intentions on the second day, became complicated.

“You can think of Vivian as trying to take over the business of her father, Duke Alexis.”

To him, Antonio threw a keyword that was full of room for interpretation.

“Duke Alexis was an ambitious person. So, he was very interested in trade with other races and worked hard to achieve it on a regular basis. He believed that the future of Elysium depended on such exchanges. When we were in a relationship, I also helped with that work from the side. However, I wanted to build my career as a mercenary a little more. As a result, I moved to the Blackhawk Mercenary Corps, and my relationship with the Pierre family became estranged for a long time.”

Alexis put a lot of effort into trade.

The core of his ambitious ideology was that Elysium had to break away from isolation.

So, Alexis argued that Elysium had achieved enough internal expansion and should break away from its existing fundamentalism and start communicating with other alien races.

The material justification was that there were many resources in the alien race territories.

Therefore, Alexis thought that if he directly showed the value of those resources to the people of Elysium,

his argument would soon take hold.

“After that, I heard rumors about the Pierre family from afar. About the Duke and Vivian. Then, the Duke passed away. But at the time, I couldn’t visit. It was due to the political reasons of the mercenary corps I belonged to. So, after leaving the Blackhawk Mercenary Corps, I met Vivian again. In those days, she was already a merchant who had taken over her father’s trading business.”

Alexis Saint-Pierre, the reformist figure who seemed like he would become the leader of a new era, suddenly passed away.

Death is a sad thing, but since he was a rival of Louis XV, who had just ascended to the throne around that time, even that unfortunate death was not properly mourned.

Antonio, who belonged to the Blackhawk Mercenary Corps, which was aligned with Louis XV, was the same.

Then, after the years when that ice melted, he was able to meet Vivian, who had become an adult, again.

And she had already become the head of the Pieta Merchant Guild and was inheriting her father’s path.

“She must have respected her father a lot?”

“She did. When Vivian was young, she really didn’t want to leave Alexis’s side even for a moment. So, whenever Alexis went on business trips to other countries, she always followed him. Alexis’s love for his daughter was great, and Vivian’s love for her father was also tearful.”

There was no need for complicated words.

Vivian, who inherited her dead father’s business before she was even 20 years old,

showed how much she loved and missed her father, Alexis.

Antonio nodded greatly in agreement to Eugene, who was indirectly asking about it.

“So, I was honestly very worried. I wondered if Vivian, the daughter of a duke, would be able to stand up again. In fact, I expected her to live as a failure for a really long time. But she overcame it. In a truly ambitious way. So, I’m doing my best to support her in my own way like this.”

The Pierre family still enters Gothand, but it is essentially called a Gothand that is only a facade.

That’s the story after Alexis suddenly left.

In that way, the family declined, and Vivian herself was soaked in tremendous shock and exhaustion.

Everyone thought that exhaustion would last for at least 10 years, but

Vivian overturned everyone’s expectations.

‘Hmm… She liked her father that much, and Jeanne was the one who cared the most and stayed by her side when her father passed away, and she acted like that towards Jeanne?’

It was a very touching story.

However, Eugene could only hear it from a different perspective.

Knowing how obsessed Vivian was with her father, her actions towards Jeanne are even more incomprehensible.

‘I’m sure I know what she feels about me.’

However, the moment he saw the portrait of her father, Alexis, hanging in Vivian’s bedroom, he was able to understand it.

Why Vivian is reaching out to Eugene more than necessary.

‘My father has black hair.’

The image of Alexis Saint-Pierre in the portrait,

he had black hair.

‘I heard that he awakened, but he didn’t live a life like the Knights. Still, if he has that physique, could there be a barbarian in his family line?’

It wasn’t just about having black hair.

The overall image and physique are quite similar to Eugene.

Of course, Alexis in the portrait is in his middle age, so he had a dignified feeling, but he certainly felt different from ordinary Imperium people.

The nobles brought various awakened people into their family, and among them were sometimes barbarians.

Nobles have so much genetic diversity that sometimes, completely different-looking people come out.

Alexis seems to be such a case.

Perhaps his ambitious tendency may also be based on that.

‘In other words, Vivian has a considerable father complex, and her father died too early without properly filling that father complex.’

In that way, Eugene became convinced of the situation.

‘But when she met me, who looks quite similar to her father, she felt an enormous attraction.’

Why Vivian is trying to keep Eugene Schneider by her side,

It cannot be denied that the desire to screw over Jeanne is at the foundation.

So, she would have designated Eugene and watched Jeanne’s reaction, and she would have raised the corners of her lips.

But that purpose alone is too generous of a treatment for Eugene Schneider,

It was both to screw over Jeanne and because Vivian liked Eugene.

And that liking is not as a skilled mercenary but as a likable person.

A longing father,

A father whom she missed so much that she spent her entire adolescence in exhaustion,

She was swept away by the image of Eugene Schneider, who seemed to fill the void of that father, like a storm.

“Well, is there something wrong with the portrait? The frame is old, but I like the feeling, so I’m just leaving it there…”

Vivian reacted slightly indirectly as Eugene stared at Alexis’s portrait for quite a while.

There is no way that people here know the concepts of father complex and Electra complex properly like Eugene.

But Vivian, as the person involved, is experiencing it not through the realm of theory but through the intuition of the heart.

So, she must be feeling instinctively embarrassed.

“…”

Eugene stared at Vivian silently.

After that, he

“Vivian, do you like me?”

He asked her heart with no hesitation.

“Yes?”

It was truly no-nonsense itself, so Vivian was momentarily stunned.

“It’s as I said. Do you like me? In my opinion, that’s why you’re trying to take me with you under ridiculous conditions.”

However, since the reaction was not a refusal,

Eugene continued to drive the deal home skillfully.