Chapter 37

Roseanne ignored the startled eyes directed at her and continued speaking to Tearen.

“I thought it would be best for Enri to take the position of Grand Duchess, so I’ve been giving it some thought.”

She began to explain her plan to Tearen step by step.

“If Enri becomes the Grand Duchess and I help her as the Acting Grand Duchess, I can naturally stay by Enri’s side, and my father and Count Dalbreon won’t be able to easily touch Enri.”

Enria, who was not a noble but a Saintess, would take years to learn the duties of a Grand Duchess even if she became one immediately. Roseanne continued, saying that it wouldn’t be bad for her, the current Acting Grand Duchess, to stay with Enria while teaching her the Grand Duchess’s duties.

At her words, Rahar slightly furrowed his brow and said:

“Our father would never allow you to just stay in the Grand Duke’s castle as the Acting Grand Duchess. Furthermore, if you use illusion magic to make Enria a noble, the very act of bringing in an Acting Grand Duchess becomes a problem. Enria would be falsely branded as a noble lady incapable of properly carrying out the Grand Duchess’s duties.”

There was a point to that. Nobles, especially the mistresses of each noble family, learned their duties from a very young age. Moreover, an Acting Mistress was only brought in when the Mistress had suddenly died or was too ill to function. Therefore, if Roseanne, who was already engaged to Caldeon, became the Acting Grand Duchess instead of Enria, there would surely be talk about Enria’s qualifications as a Grand Duchess.

“His Majesty the Emperor, who desires your and Caldeon’s marriage, will certainly use this point against us.”

Roseanne sighed briefly, admitting that she hadn’t considered that point.

“If the goal is just to put Enria and Hayden on Caldeon’s family register, I think we could just cast the illusion magic on Father and His Majesty the Emperor.” Rahar said, looking at Roseanne, but Tearen shook his head instead of Roseanne.

“That won’t work due to many complications. Although casting illusion magic on the entire population and casting it on specific individuals are the same crime, their weight is different.”

Casting illusion magic on the entire Empire to make Roseanne and Caldeon’s marriage a fait accompli was also a serious crime, but it had a justification even if they were caught.

The justification was that he, a friend of Caldeon and Rahar, was forced to cast the illusion magic because of the continuous pressure from the Imperial Family and the nobles on the two people who didn’t want to marry. Of course, that justification itself couldn’t completely cover the crime of manipulating the memories of the entire Empire’s population, but it was an issue that only needed to be avoided being discovered.

However, if illusion magic were used on specific individuals, the justification would disappear, and the only concern for Tearen was the act of documenting the memory manipulation illusion magic, which only he could currently perform, to pass it down to future generations.

Currently, illusion magic in the Empire was merely magic that could create visual illusions. This was because the successive families of illusionists did not want to delve deeply into complex and difficult illusion magic, and simply showing illusions of giant monsters, defense walls, waterfalls, or fireballs was enough to earn envious gazes in battles and festivals. Especially in battles against monsters, an illusionist’s participation, showing illusions like massive whirlwinds or meteors, allowed them to attack fleeing monsters and easily lead to victory, so they had no particular reason to study the already complicated illusion magic further.

In such a situation, Tearen, who was born a genius, was the only one who delved into illusion magic, and thus he alone could create the memory manipulation illusion magic. Therefore, the memory manipulation illusion magic he developed was an important technique that must be passed down to his children, and in order to document this technique, there must be no record that he used it to commit a wicked deed.

It was a simple problem when thought about. No matter how excellent the technique an ancestor passed down, if the descendants learned that their ancestor developed that technique to commit a serious crime, who would be able to learn illusion magic openly? Thus, Tearen wished to commit only crimes with justification, whether they were discovered or not, and therefore, casting memory manipulation illusion magic on only the Emperor and a few nobles was certainly fraught with complications.

“Then what should we do…”

Roseanne’s face clouded over as she realized that the method she had continuously pondered was not a good solution.

“Haven’t you thought of any other way?”

Tearen asked her in a gentle voice, and Roseanne shook her head, telling him:

“At first, I thought about buying a fallen viscount family or something similar to make Enria a noble. Since most viscount families only educate their eldest daughter, if I made Enria the second daughter, it wouldn’t seem strange for me to enter as the Acting Grand Duchess.”

“Hmm, that’s true.”

“But buying noble titles is already causing problems in many areas, isn’t it? I was a bit worried that the fallen noble who took Enria as the second daughter might turn around at any moment and try to lay hands on Enria’s assets.”

Although she didn’t think that a family created by money would dare to threaten Caldeon like that, it was still a matter of concern because the Empire’s nouveau riche had already been victims of such families many times.

The Imperial law itself was structured to mandate help without compensation for family members.

“And if I tried to raise Enria to nobility by just buying a family name, that also involves many issues and would take a long time. I also wonder if there’s even a family willing to sell only its name.”

Roseanne said that since both buying a fallen family name for Enria and having her enter as the second daughter were problematic, she hadn’t attempted those plans and was pinning her hopes on Tearen’s illusion magic.

At that, Tearen nodded a couple of times at Roseanne and looked at Caldeon.

“You must have thought of something, too.”

“I also thought that getting your help would have the least complications.”

Caldeon replied calmly to Tearen’s question and continued, looking at Enria.

“More than anything, I can’t force the duties of the Grand Duchess onto Enria right now.”

Caldeon added that, with his selfish heart, he wanted to postpone Enria learning the Grand Duchess’s duties and spend a lot of time with Hayden and himself for now.

“It’s true that she has to learn it eventually, but it weighs on my mind that she’d miss Hayden’s growth, which she can only see now, just to learn those duties.”

He said that having missed all the time Hayden was in the womb, and his growth since birth until now, he wanted to spend a lot of time with Enria and Hayden starting from this moment.

At that, Rahar slightly frowned at Caldeon.

“I understand how you feel, but now is not the time for such leisurely talk. The Magic Tower has already started moving to eliminate the owners of the Power of Absolution. And Panz has allied himself with the black magicians.”

“I know that, which is why I’m trying to make Enria and Hayden my family as quickly as possible.”

Caldeon countered, raising an eyebrow.

Tearen stared intently at the two of them and then asked Roseanne.

“Roseanne, do you want to continue working as the Acting Grand Duchess?”

When Roseanne hesitated for a moment at his question, Tearen told her that if they were going to nullify their marriage, it would be best to also nullify the part where Roseanne was in the Grand Duke’s castle as the Acting Grand Duchess. He said it would be more natural to establish Enria as the Grand Duchess later if Lady Kaznaren was not remembered as having come to the Grand Duke’s castle to perform the Grand Duchess’s duties from the beginning.

“But if you do that, won’t you lose the reason to come to the Grand Duke’s castle?”

Roseanne’s gaze shifted to Enria at her question.

Enria knew well that if Roseanne was not here as the Acting Grand Duchess, her father would surely not allow her to come to the Grand Duke’s castle.

Furthermore, if Caldeon made her his Grand Duchess, Roseanne would undoubtedly be pressured to marry another noble who could be beneficial to her family. Roseanne’s father, as depicted in the original story, was certainly the kind of person who would do that.

At Enria’s words, Roseanne nodded slightly.

“Probably. To be honest, I want to stay in the Grand Duke’s castle, too. I want to protect you, the owners of the oracle the Magic Tower is after, with my own power.”

She said that the biggest reason was that she needed to be close to Enria and Hayden to fight the Magic Tower that was trying to kill the owner of the oracle, but she also personally wished to spend time with Enria and watch Hayden grow up.

Roseanne, adding that Enria was the first friend whose heart resonated with hers and someone she had to protect, so she didn’t want to be separated, offered Enria an awkward smile.

“It sounds like a confession when I put it that way, but actually, I just like spending time with you like this.”

“Me too.”

When Enria replied with a smile, Caldeon and Rahar’s brows subtly furrowed simultaneously.

“Grand Duchess… Ah, since this situation will be sorted out soon, I guess I can stop calling you that. Anyway, I think Lady Kaznaren is forgetting something: Enria is my woman.”

When she first became the Acting Grand Duchess, Roseanne had told Caldeon he had to call her ‘Grand Duchess’ so she wouldn’t make a mistake in front of others. That title had continued ever since, but now that the title didn’t need to be continued, Caldeon changed the title.

Roseanne frowned at Caldeon, and Rahar immediately said to her:

“Enria is the same sex as you, Roseanne. I don’t think you’ve opened your eyes to that side, but…”

“Would you please shut your mouth, Brother?”

Roseanne glared at Rahar with a serious expression at his absurd comment, and Tearen laughed quietly.

“Anyway, it’s not very difficult to make Her Ladyship a Viscountess who didn’t exist in the Empire. However, the period after that is what takes a bit of time.”

Tearen said that putting everything else aside, the most important issue was Enria’s life as a Saintess. He explained that if he changed Enria’s birth with illusion magic, everyone who remembered her as a Saintess would lose their memory of Enria.

He added that this was the most fundamental butterfly effect in memory manipulation illusion magic: if Enria’s life as a Saintess disappeared, she could never enter the Grand Sanctuary as a Saintess again, and she must not act like she knew anyone who knew her.

“Since all the time from her childhood will be completely erased, you must think carefully about that part.”