Please Don’t Come To The Villainess’ Stationery Store! - Chapter 43

When all the children left, the babbling atmosphere disappeared in an instant.

‘Although I don’t know what part of my heart people occupy, I know their place.’
(T/N: I tried to translate this as best as I could. It’s a proverb that practically means feeling empty without someone.)

I shook my head and drew a blueprint of the future.

‘First, let’s continue to operate and secure regular customers.’

I planned to meet the needs of people to secure regular customers by making small talk.

‘I’m going to match the ideas I have from the children and then offer them accordingly.’

They said cotton blankets, swords, and cakes made of ice.

I sketched out ideas without hesitation on the paper and mumbled softly.

‘Good.’

“Do you remember how excited the kids were earlier? Fluffy cotton blankets, ice cakes, and swords.”

I grinned and turned my head toward Dominique.

“Are you thinking of making those?”

Dominique asked with a nod. He looked like he wasn’t sure what I was going to say.

“Yeah! I going to pick the clouds from the sky!”

“……?”

Dominique’s eyes on me were like ‘Poor Mel, did the pressure finally drive you crazy?’

But I was serious.

“…how?”

He wasn’t happy, but because of our contract, he had to listen.

I spoke seriously while nodding.

“It’s probably simple. As long as we have sugar.”

It won’t be hard to make a nice cloud of sugar that’s like a fluffy blanket.

“It called cotton candy!”

I recalled the cotton candy I had in my previous life. I wanted to present the sweetness that melts in your mouth to children as gifts.

‘But the question is, what magic do we use to make cotton candy?’

That was always the next problem.

How can we make something that will overwhelm everyone?

Dominique was a hero who used life magic, I couldn’t afford a high level wizard, and my alchemy skills are still very poor.

To make matters worse, Dominique, had bad news.

“The spies have increased. I can feel their presence even now. I think they will try to kill you.”

I smiled happily after putting my hands on both his cheeks.

I can’t believe that on top of trying to ruin my store, they’re trying to kill me.

“Ah, I guess I’m a little intimidating now, huh?”

Dominique, a hero specialized in arms, smiled and nodded.

“But those spies are now just our prey. I played with them again.”

“……?”

Just how did you play with them?

‘Is it just my imagination that the spies are in pain?’

Dominique’s cowardly smile flustered me slightly.

‘…I think I taught you wrong.’

I heard that a sword’s ego was influenced by the contractor’s tendencies.

‘I didn’t look like a villain to Dominique, did I?’

No. I don’t think so.

I shook my head and forgot my uneasy thoughts.

“Yes, yes. Then, let’s quickly shake off the spies after getting some information.”

“Okay.”

Dominique got serious right away.

After a while, the stationery store’s door opened and spies dressed in black crawled in from outside the door.

“Kneel.”

“Yes, yes!”

Dominique brainwashed the spies to boil their knees in front of me like corvina.

I felt deep satisfaction looking at them gaze up at me.

‘Ah, it’s seductive.’

They were the ones who were always bullying Meldenique.

“Banish the lowlife Princess.”

“Isn’t your blood cursed?”

They’d insulted me often like that… But now, losing to the logic of power, they were boiling their knees in front of me.

I shifted to a dignified attitude toward the spies.

“Tell me everything you know.”

Then, the spies in front of me began to blow up all the information they knew faithfully.

“This is led by Duchess Hildegart Vaveloa.”

“The direct movement is by Viscount Telin at the top run by Miss Hildegart.”

Viscount Telin?

One of the spies quickly continued as I nodded to the familiar name.

“Yes yes, Ms. Hildegart’s closest associate, famous for being a great wizard, Viscount Telin.”

“I don’t know the details, but he is preparing something.”

I drifted far from the original story, so just why were the people who want my excommunication still bothering me?

I sighed and spoke pitifully.

“Why are they bothering such a nice person like me?”

Dominique, who was standing next to me, dodged my gaze by rubbing his cheek.

“Honestly, you’re not nice…”

“The world is too harsh to a nice person like me!”

I ignored Dominique and continued to think.

Lenox’s pride must have been hurt by the last incident. And Duchess Hildegart always wanted to get rid of me for her precious daughter.

‘Then all we have left is doomsday.’

I signaled with my chin to the spies boiling their knees in front of me.

“Get out.”

“Yes!”

The spies were lined up again like candy.

Dominique didn’t forget to brainwash them again thoroughly before they left.

“They said Viscount Telin, right?”

“Yeah, they did. What does Viscount Telin do?”

Dominique, who wasn’t familiar with nobility yet, asked with a look of curiosity.

“Um, Do I say he’s a lunatic wizard? If that person sends a product to the Academy, then… people will be out of their offices to see what he sent. He loves to show off.”

I searched through Meldenique’s memories and relayed the information I knew. At the same time, the physical and verbal abuse he gave Meldenique came to my mind.

‘I don’t want to kill trash like you right away…’

He spoke to me with blood-red eyes.

‘You’re so insignificant, it’s like playing with ants without killing them.’

The wizard who dirtied his hand on behalf of Hildegart and Sheria, also had a dirty mouth.

‘Even though Meldenique is a Princess, he always spoke informally.’

And he only talked like that when no one else was around.

He was a mean man. A dangerous man who had no empathy was going into a business for children.

Now that it’s like this, I can never lose this fight.

“Dominique, I will definitely clean up the trash.”

I spoke with determination.

Fortunately, I had memories of his patterns and tricks.

“He’s crazy about magic.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Crazy enough to cut off one of his arms to concentrate more for a magic experiment.”

The reason why such a nut job did everything Hildegart told him to was simple.

‘Because Hildegart saved Viscount Telin as a child.’

It was a coincidence that Hildegart took Viscount Telin’s reins.

One day, Telin, who was doing a magic experiment, accidentally ate the wine of a whine flower, which was widely known to be poisonous.

There was only one way to detoxify the poison. To lure the light that flows from a healing magic artifact called Pinard’s Branch.

At the time, Hildegart was the only one in the Empire who owned Pinard’s Branch, and she was excited to use her genius and pledged to save Viscount Telin.

In 『Lovers Caught in Magic,』 I remembered it in detail the relationship between Hildegart and Telin because it was an important part of the story.

Hildegart and Viscount Telin were both vicious and strange. Paradoxically, however, this allowed both to act as a control device for each other.

‘Like a crocodile and the crocodile’s bird.’

He was also one who must be removed in order to properly deal with Hildegart.

‘He’s a human being that needs to be eliminated for humanity.’

That piece of trash used to bring in bizarre magic tools and caused side effects on the world.

It probably wasn’t very different from now.

‘Because the mana stone, which makes people experience hell, and slime, which confuses the human mind to only function for 24 hours, are the Viscount’s work.’

I stared out the window.

“I’m sure the side effects will bring about extreme magic.”

“Hm…”

“Then what do we do, Mel? Do we stay like this?”

“No.”

I shook my head.

“First, we need to figure out what they’re planning.”

And I will use that to change the game.